Poems

Nine Years Later - A DATED POEM

I appeared/turned up in the blood of October, my hands were
funereal/mournful with silence
and my eyes were tied/bound to a thick darkness.
 
If I spoke, my voice sounded to me like a
dislodged/evacuated/abandoned material/matter/substance
my bones were drenched with cold,
my legs flowed with time, moving out of [lit. towards outside] the square,
in a strange and meaningless/without meaning direction: of rebirth,
taking me to the mirrors and the disordered streets.
 
The city was flattened/laid waste by silence,
cut like quartz, slashes of diagonal light gave/were giving their
dense/compact [lit. squeezed] portions
to the street corners, the bodies were silent/didn't speak and
flattened/squashed/crushed against their life,
but there were other bodies also, but there were other bodies also.
 
I speak with all of my blood and with my individual memories. And I am alive.
 
I wonder [lit. ask myself]: how do we have our eyes, our hands, our brain and our
bones
after I left the square? Everything is dense, voluminous/massive and flows,
after I left the square.
 
The air told/was telling me that everything was calm, waiting.
 
I moved out [lit. towards outside] of the square, my mouth was burnt with the memories,
and my blood was fresh and glowing like a continuous ring
on the inside of my body absolutely alive. So I was moving
out of the square, entire/whole and breathing
 
I was breathing images and since that time all those images
visit/come to me in dreams,
breaking everything, like delirious horses.
 
In the kneading/concoction/mixture/jumble of the day
was the mirror of death.
And a word of my life was hanging from an infinite edge/border.
 
I would not like to speak of the scale of that afternoon,
not place here adverbs, shout or lament/wail/mourn.
 
But I would like, yes, for all of a burn of anger to be seen
staining the mirror of death.
Where could I place my life, my words
but there, nine years later, in that cold anger,
in that animal of rage that sometimes awakes to adorn [lit. enamel] my dreams
with its bloodthirsty/cruel breath?
 
All of my blood circulates through my life, complete, unquestionable.
But then I heard how it was pausing, fastened/tied/lashed to my breathing,
and beating, with the noiseless/silent [lit. deaf] call of its stillness, beating
my interior voices, my gestures of living human,
the love that I have been able to give and the death that I will
literally [?] deliver/hand over.
 
Later/then fear came to my eyes to cover them with its frozen fingers
 
All the silence of my body opened/was opening its sockets
in front of the bodies levelled/flattened/laid waste, spat towards death by the
zeal of the shrapnel:
those shining bodies, bloody and cut back/cut out against the broken into
small pieces light of the afternoon,
other bodies different from mine and more different still,
because they had been eradicated/rooted out from human life by an enormous
slash,
by a vertiginous ferocity, by hands of an aching/sad/mourning force that
threw/was throwing itself, howling
against those bodies already more faint/insubstantial than the afternoon
and more and more brilliant/shining, in my dream of still living human being.
 
It is true that I heard the shrapnel and now I write this,
and it is true that my blood flows again and I still dream
with a type of dead doubt, and sometimes I see my body naked
like a spacious/roomy/slow/deliberate food for the devouring mouth of love.
 
Where were the bonds/cords of my life,
my mirrors and my days, when afternoon fell on the square?
If I take a piece/scrap, a thread/strand/filament of my body to
place it against the memory of that afternoon in that square,
I draw back/retreat frightened at my life as if they had struck my mouth
the extremely light fingers of hundreds of ghosts.
 
I speak of these immense memories because I had to
do it some time, like this or another way.
 
I was leaving the square with a living stupor in my mouth and my eyes
and I felt/could feel my saliva and my blood, still living.
It was a cool night, given to time [?].
But in the streets, on the corners, in the rooms/bedrooms,
there were bodies flattened/crushed/overwhelmed and sealed
against their life by a large and bitter fear.
A ring of fear was closing on the city
like a strange dream that did not end and that
did not lead to any waking up.
 
It was the mirror of death that happened/was happening[unexpectedly]/
befell/followed.
But death had already passed/occurred with its armour and its instruments
through every corner, through all the abolished air of the square.
It was the mirror of death with its reflections of fear
that gave us shadow/shade in a city that was this city.
 
And in the street it was possible to see how a hand closed/was closing,
how a blink was happening, how feet were slipping, with a thick silence,
looking for an exit,
but there were no exits: there was only
a huge door open onto the realms of fear.
 
October 1977