Pietrasanta
Here the air is full of dust
from the stone
that has been hewn from the statues.
I breathe it in like a wine connoisseur
the many ingredients
that comprise a surge of ecstasy:
White marble from Carrara
black from Belgium
Brazilian granite
and the Persian travertine
that is full of the light of Asia.
My days are a shimmer of dust
where the light often
when tiredness overcomes me
describes the outline of a figure
on its way away from me
with streaming hair
and an experienced, smiling face
looking back over its shoulder
over its almost invisible wings.
The dry intoxication
that dust gives
makes me have strange dreams.
My lungs hurt.
When I breathe in so deeply
that everything goes black
I see the statues assemble
to take the places
that were ours
- those in the light of the moon
and those in that of the lemons.
When I die, the stone will be healed
the dust will return
to the statues
the statues will return
to the stones
the stones will return to the mountains.
There will not be anyone left to stare
with eyes of onyx.
No one will stretch out their arms to me
in an ambiguous gesture.
On clear days I can see from the window
the white peaks that my death will heal.
1 comment:
I had a cup of espresso in Pietrasanta some years ago, with this Danish poet at the table. I did not know him, neither about him, by then. He brought an Italian newspaper and was most upset about all the fuzz they made on the rapt of a little girl. I then understood he was a great mind, but I said nothing. So he did not understand I was another one. Perhaps I was not. Must have been about 1982, may be 85.
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