Valentina Diana

Valentina Diana (1968, Turin) is an actress, playwright and poet. Her first collection of poems, Tre ore di notte e un pezzo del mattino (trad. Three hours of night and a piéce of morning) was published in 2007, and launched in Italy, Holland, France and Portugal; her poetry, in translation, has appeared in journals in Paris, Krakow, Aquas Santas (Portugal), Singapore. In 2008 her poetry has been translated by Hélène Lang and published in Poèmes chuchotés sur la berge du Pô. Six poètes de Turin Poésie (Edizioni Le Ricerche, Lugano), in 2009 by Gail McDowell and published in Double Skin. New Poetry Voices from Italy and Singapore (Ethos Books, Singapore). It's forthcoming a new collection of poems.

Dictations


The day stretches out
unimpeded
footsteps follow
the sea
the footsteps know where to go
the day stretches out and doesn't want to leave you
you clutch a piece of glass in your hand tired of swimming.
You still know what is soon forgotten
on a normal day.
The light is beautiful
it's the salvation of outlines and shadows
the quiet moment follows the indecision
the vexation of not knowing anymore
which boots to buy or the anxiety
of quitting smoking. So
you buy a how-to book
that explains life
that explains love
that explains death
and God.
The footsteps languish
the love that has nourished your blood
dissolves in your mouth like the last bit
of a sugar candy,
we will have no more than this
we will have nothing else.

Solitude is a tranquil pose
not discomposed
the passage from flesh to marble.

children


One dreams: a long and smoke-filled corridor.
One dreams: voices coming from upstairs, while he takes a shower on the floor below.
the villa is big it's slippery. He’s the only one who wakes up early in the morning to avoid bumping into the others before he goes out.
One dreams that his bed is on fire because he didn't put out his cigarette well enough.
One dreams Tomorrow I'm leaving. I'm not staying here.
One dreams (tomorrow's too late to shower. I haven't been able to wash with hot water in days).
He dreams of gushing water that massages his neck. He dreams of a woman. His woman, whom he hasn't seen in a month, she's talking to him. He dreams of her voice. The tone of her voice as she tells him – you're not here – waking him up.
One dreams of his mother. He dreams of her the way she was when he was small. He dreams of himself through his mother's eyes. He only sees himself – the breast and the mouth.
One dreams that he’s falling. He always dreams that he's falling.
One dreams of a tram, a very old one, the conductor smokes a cigarette as he sells the tickets, ripping them from a pad of tickets. The paper is very thin, pale yellow, the rips are never the same. The conductor is an old man, along with the tickets he distributes flyers about a strike. A general strike.
One dreams that the room is all his, that the others don't live there anymore.
One dreams about wine.
One dreams about lingering kitchen smells.
One dreams about waking up and having a dry mouth.
One dreams of having dreamt that he slept with a woman who wasn't his. He dreams that in the dream she was.
One dreams of leaving for a land that nobody has ever seen, of traveling where none of the others have ever traveled. He dreams of a place where everybody is carrying a suitcase. The place everybody departs from.
One dreams of a hand drawing a vase of flowers with long stalks and instead of flowers there are small heads wearing hats, meek faces that all resemble one another, some of the stalks are bending down like reeds in the wind, others have straight stalks and their noses are pointing upwards as if they were sniffing the air or: Seeing which way the wind is blowing.
One dreams that she sees Jesus. He has long hair and a broken nose. The fracture can just barely be seen by a small scar and a slight slip of his septum.
Jesus says – don't touch me, don't brush against me, don’t come near me, but as he talks he holds Mary Magdalene in his arms and he gives her a child. A son she conceived unawares.
One dreams that he's throwing dice and winning. That he's throwing more dice and winning again. That he keeps throwing dice and keeps winning.
One dreams that he's a highway toll collector and that he says to himself Hello. And that he says to himself: It's so cold this morning, don’t you think? – and that he says to himself: Have some tea, I keep it in a thermos – And that he offers himself a cup of very hot very sweet tea, while the line of cars behind him honk a march with their horns.
One dreams of all the days she's forgotten. Of all the things she's lost. Of all the voices she can't hear anymore – of everything that has slipped her mind, ever since she was born.
One dreams that his hands are doing clever tricks of prestidigitation without explaining the trick.
One dreams of a clear moon, enormous, he dreams that he doesn't believe it's real.
One dreams of his last chance.
One dreams of a word written with the blood of his enemy. The word is Forgiveness.
One dreams with clenched jaw and grinding teeth.
One dreams that he wakes up and puts on his shoes, no socks, he goes downstairs and takes a shower that uses up everybody's hot water and then goes back to bed, on his tiptoes, full of warmth, with wet hair and shoes in hand, so he doesn’t wake up the others.

guardian angels


and then there were the leftover things on the table
and I can't make heads or tails of it anymore
if you turn around you can see for yourself
that there's nothing to be done
rather than close yourself off
you should go higher up
rather than close yourself off
you should raise your sights.
on Saturday we'll go for a run
or do something generic
I have a heart murmur
I have something
that's not quite right
anymore
I'm scared
and at night I hear the mouse
running all around
in the room
it wakes me up
when I turn on the light it's there
but it's too small
and too scared
in the corner
it tries to climb up the wall to avoid attracting attention
and then my hate turns into anxiety
for it
I wish it could understand me
I wish it would save itself
I wish it had been born someplace else
the small things
the small animals
why do we always have to disturb one another?
I just wish I could sleep
when it's time to sleep.
since I don't have a precise viewpoint
I decide to be on the others' side
I join in
I line up the most widely-accepted opinions
and I adopt them for my own
because I don't even have the strength to raise a fork
without looking over my shoulder and thinking that god
is always up for anything
when it comes to executing me.
I adopt commonly-held beliefs
I adopt the general idea of going with the flow
to avoid attracting attention.
my smock was green and white.
little checks.
every button was in place
and when I wore it
I really did look like
someone who had it all.

I always start all over again
every morning
I put the evil with the evil
and the good with the good
and I comb the
tangled hair of the world.
chronicle at day's end


when I went out and didn't find you
I searched for you but I was sure I wouldn't find you
because you weren't there
and it wasn't a tragedy
if you weren't there
and then I breathed an air of extraneousness
as the cars passed
the same cars as when
we were looking for a parking place
negatives
white where they were black and black
where they were white
it wasn't clear
you weren't there
and yet it was obvious
you weren't because this was
the final scene
but that wasn't possible
it wasn't possible
and so then you appeared
perforce
you appeared, to solve
and you arrived
and we embraced in the middle
that you had returned for me
perforce. to solve,
to correct things in the sense of life
that's why you returned
to take me back by car
onto the straight and narrow path
that I wasn't on –
along the perfect drift of goodbye,
you came to get me
seated as I was on the ground
at that crossroads,
and you hugged me
and you told me: impossible
and you told me: impossible
let's do something
and then I thought about all the beers
about all the wrong things we could still do
about all those cars passing by in the middle
that just-born tragedy
and I didn't believe it
I didn't believe it anymore
for a moment
I believed
that it had all happened to us
like a joke
because there were no others to fool with
and then I closed my eyes
and I thought: there's no difference
if I close my eyes there's no difference between now
and five minutes ago
before the trick
and I believed it
and then you said it was better to get away
from that street
because it could be dangerous to stay there
right there
and the word danger
applied to a street
seemed to me so innocuous and beneficent
that I immediately obeyed you
and then
and then we understood one thing:
it goes on
and on
an eye
to redo the roof and the kitchen
the liver
for the whitewashed walls and the small
English garden
the heart
for the staircase in wrought
iron
the photos in the bathroom
and I go buy myself a pair of shoes
with high heels
we have realized that it takes more patience:
calculate life at length
forwards and backwards
and you conceive it
and you measure it
not just forwards
but backwards as well
and thus it becomes a game
like going back home to try out
like going home to greet once more
home
for the same things
the most elementary things in the world
opening and closing the washing machine
and saying that everything is the same
that it's all the same
as before
it rains.
that we're tired and let's sleep.
That we'll go to the seaside tomorrow
and have breakfast.