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These thoughts take me long back to the period of the
Upanishads, where relation between speech and mind is the second
step in the effort to achieve supreme delight. Most of the books
including the Mahabharata attach prime importance to control of
the mind. One of the questions that the Yaksha asked Yudhishtira
was who was faster than air, and Yudhishtira gave the correct
reply that it was the mind. Thus most of our ancient literature
talks about mind as if it were an unreined horse which is to be
controlled. But while reading poetry I always feel that the
freedom of mind is most significant for poetry. A poet has to
pass through the jungle of the mind before creating his/her own
world of poetry. Sometimes I feel that exercising too much
control over the mind may hinder the poetic imagination. It is
also true that a lack of control can lead to tremendous mental
agitation, piloting the creative writer to a stage when he loses
sight of the fine margin that divides life and death. That may
be the reason why death is a very interesting subject for poets.
Rati Saxena
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folding her careful fingers
in the common ritual of life
and if you speak in response of glance
–and it’s your turn–see the unspanned
arch of teeth, the ache of it
that is given us that we may agree
Antonio Diavoli
*
run really runs,
flow one’s own
flows, fine, now:
the wedding ring
–wanna see!–
IS MARRING
to hamper hands
–gonna be me?–
thirty ’n’ three
nearly.
run runs ’n’ leap, leap leaps ’n’ runs, run
TO LEAN
TO LIVE
Massimo Sannelli
*
because the name makes room for dance,
light chipping the substance
of being two in a shape of statues,
in walking weak with justice ,
copper on beam, a defeated rain
between grates, in itself, the bones of crying
Paolo Fichera
*
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The first obsession is a question: which language? A common one
or an individual experience? We know that language is not a
simple tool- it is the building of our national and personal
identity. The problem is that our language is a cultural
construction, taught at school and broadcasted by media: Italy
was a dialectal country, with social and regional peculiarities,
as Alba Amoia wrote in 1977: «Culturally, Italy is handicapped
by the fact that basically it is not one country. The twenty
Italian regions have little in common with each other; there are
vast differences between the industrialized North and the
undeveloped South». These words are thirty years old, but show a
reality we know and see every day.
Modern poets hesitate between two possibilities: a language with
the ambition to reproduce reality (simple language for a simple
reality) or a language that could be individual as a person,
with its own rules and discipline. This is what Antonio Diavoli
and Chiara Daino (both poets and translators) do.
Massimo Sannelli
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Children own this town
there isn't any theftt only spells transformed
into feverish acquiring and selling, a bit
of wool for pungent feet, and a thick
mattress for lying down. There are only
women in widow's weeds, old lullabies
and the desire to be city folk, like
the rest.
There are no widow's weeds at all in town
only turbaned women or other apishness
children playing with a harp, fingers tight
around a branch.
*
If you want, I don't know, if you can, relight the fuse
terribly cold (cotton wool in the sky
still a pearl) though you grow sad, pointing to the sky
mud-filled hands.
Attempting a solution: even if it's only death
indivisible from your ascending, sun.
Amelia Rosselli
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I cannot say clearly how I
entered there,
So drowsy with sleep had I grown at that hour
When first I wandered off from the true way.
But when I had reached the base of a hill,
There at the border where the valley ended
That had cut my heart to the quick with panic,
I looked up at the hill and saw its shoulder
Mantled already with the planet's light
That leads all people straight by every road.
With that my panic quieted a little
After lingering on in the lake of my heart
Through the night I had so grievously passed.
Dante Alighieri
After the war, my cousin, larger than life, came home,
He was one of the few. And now he had money.
Our relatives muttered: “A year, at the most,
He’ll blow it all, and then take off again.
Bums live that way till the day tey die.”
Cesar Pavese
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