TRANSLATED FROM THE ITALIAN BY CRISTINA VITI

 

Krauses’ Corpuscles

THE PLIMSOLL LINE

*

 

So many new words have been learnt

complicated words

clustered beyond the door, lying in ambush. 

And ambush has its own gaze:

it threatens, usurps, above all it persists

       not knowing silence.

The din of data, the ups and downs, thresholds

          the Excel spreadsheets, exact data 

          sensations, suspensions

bodies named as the count progresses.

Where is the count at?  

 

*

 

The parting forms new tribes: 

the careless, the unaware, the healthy, the sly

those who take care of the agony of others…

If you’re still scared when you wake up

        take my hand again. 

Do your fingers still remember me? 

 

*

 

Careless, the night baptizes some

 offering an imprint to their foreheads

                 and they’re the disappeared. 

 Others are waiting, others denying, others pretending

        that nothing ever happens. 

 Others despair, others look for love ties,

 find them anew. 

 Who is the one you’d want to call by name,

 feel close to you?  

 

*

 

The gap between beauty and unbalance:

there is no forecast

for this or for the weariness, the dryness

of gestures in the impossibility of doing otherwise

but believe me: no one accustoms to being apart

and that’s why we’ve trained our gaze.

To see further beyond. 

And there’s so much that’s worth the effort 

despite the attrition… We need distance

I know: now everything’s so exceedingly close

and some repeat there’s nothing but ruins

debris and ruins. But look closer: 

what do you see? 

 

*

 

No, we won’t be just bodies riddled with absence

but a range of miracles.

Feel how long the world endures inside you. 

And tell me: 

where shall we begin? 

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Notes:

The Plimsoll Line (also known as The eye of Plimsoll) is a conventional mark on the sides of merchant ships indicating the position of the waterline corresponding to the maximum permissible load.

By metaphorical extension, the suite of 12 texts addresses the year of the pandemic (which began in March 2020) and the moral, physical and social burdens that have impacted society and individuals. 

Each text ends with a question: not addressed to the present but to the future.

The Plimsoll Line is a short kernel written upon invitation of the Swiss Embassy in Tel Aviv (Israel) and related to the project “Wake-up! Diplomacy Towards a Healthy Future”.

 

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Also, read Someone Else’s Cinderella by Sonja Veselinović, translated from the Serbian by Marija Bergam Pellicani and published in The Antonym:

Someone Else’s Cinderella— Sonja Veselinović

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