TRANSLATED FROM ITALIAN BY PATRICK WILLIAMSON
There is nothing in this room.
There is only you. Mouthing off,
drinking milk. Playing
with a small coin.
The air drips white from the ceiling
and when it falls it tinkles
like a small coin.
You wonder if there is a way
to end it all.
You would put your gold
on the scales now, all your gold
to make it stop.
You feel a lot of pain.
*
White walls
white sheets
white corridors.
And white the warm milk in the cup
white the naked flesh of the companion
white the gowns
white the tablets
in the white plastic cup.
If I squinted
barely squeezing my eyelids
here is a black flicker.
I carved my fantastic hieroglyphic
on the bark of the air.
In family photos she was laughing now
that blonde child had
never thought of death
never thrown salt into her knickers
as a test
to resist pain.
*
In the man’s world, everything has a name.
Man’s forefinger
says this and that. Mine and yours, it decides.
And then again.
It judges and boxes every substance
in the white cotton wool of the word.
But in the other world
the flat black deep one
nothing could be named.
Even the diagnosis
also lowered its guard slightly crumbled.
*
I have always loved that time of day
when the sun no longer behind
but in front of the body casts its shadow.
Then I walked like a spectre
drenched in light in the hospital garden.
And resting my feet, each step
preceded itself
coinciding perfectly it seemed
where it was supposed to be was right.
My dark twin showed me the way. I
was nothing but the calm trail
the rein too long pulled and let go
for having bloodied the palm.
We loved that time of day.
We walked like spectres
in the hospital garden, we were
both dissolving
exiled and unfinished
a misunderstanding of light
*
F.
She said that at night angels
came out of the dresser next to her bed
and combed her hair.
In the morning she would sprinkle jewellery
powder her face, which so white
looked like a motionless mask.
Then she would put on her best pyjamas
and wait for the nurse to come
and administer her therapy. Only so, she said
only so can the cure work
from hand to mouth like beak to beak
a wriggling worm, a particle.
*
There will be no memory of us.
We will not be buried
with a bell in our coffin.
Our heads will roll like apples in the mouth of oblivion.
Picture Credits : ‘Window Dreaming’ by Nicolas Martin, Source : Pinterest
Also, read Of Words and Wind: Notes on Tehran from a Publishing Fellow by Silvia Seminara, published in The Antonym.
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