Annalisa Cima
Some posthumous poems &
His favourite italian poets
All'insegna del Pesce d'oro
di Vanni Scheiwiller,
Milano, 1999
1.
Beloved lover loving you
I have tears in my eyes
and salt on my tongue
there's no distance between us
we are
heat fallen into life forgetting
and when I look
I see you're sun
color that changes and wants to be lost
in the furrow that forks out of yearning.
2.
After the last flowers are flung
we find this field
of sowings whithe.
There are times for tears and times
when the song of days
transforms the frozen past.
And then go down the mossy paths
together in the shrouds of haze
capable of reaping the return
of a lost day.
(translated by Jonathan Galassi)
TO CHERUBINO (8)
The long night of forgetting
has left scars
the waking bitter hours.
This undefended thought
has the feel of fever
makes it sense the world
as a threat.
Can you make joy flower again
with your grace that has no bounds?
Nods of giving, of wanting
subdued by the links
that are the sources of life:
mantles, lights, unions
wood of hovered abandons.
(translated by Jonathan Galassi)
TO MY FATHER TITTA (14)
The fleeting game of days runs on,
and I see you alone again.
Even the sun dies.
Of my loving you
a light in the dark remains,
god of my childhood
insanity of knowing.
Step after step
you wanted to advance
into the abyss of nothingness,
a solitary calling
for those who don't survive in memory.
Without you I lose distant lands,
wath lasts is the rustle
of a horsechestnut
a trace remains intact
a storm, an ipse solus,
a thrush, a Margit, an Alice
and what Nietzsche says
and Treccani,
loved hands on the card table.
Place, tetragon, upsa
and slang and Greek and the false <phallus>.
Titta, the end raised above you
has no aim.
You ended in me
osmosis of stock and mind
a crazy, sincere tribe, a true
inheritance of despair.
(translated by Jonathan Galassi)
TO EUGENIO MONTALE (27)
Bright sea profile
voice that brings amazement
and untangles ideas
stay in the world
that confuses
present and past
droplets of time and sounds,
frozen crystal
where seeing oneself
is another day.
(translated by Jonathan Galassi)
