THE POEM

lingering at length

                          man’s dark side

                                                   has always emerged to

fatten

the annals of academic history

(chance

                is often fate)

but

we southern hostages

conditioned by the U.S. and U.S.S.R.

will not stand by on our balconies

watching flashes of lightning

in the sky

                  with its red in our hearts

or the death of the milky lily that purely

stood out in the green smile

of the garden;

                       in the goods-universe

of the States you say life and

you shoot death

                        – a play on words –

how many wars

in the post-war!?

in the once upon a time of civilisation

they lit upon clubs blades guns

now they drop

“smart” lightning bombs!?

tremendous flashes of fiction by air-waves

(the real wars like Web-wars: “virtual”

films like T.V. news)

deleted by the neurosis

of the remote-controlling finger

numbing dumbing images of

                                                appearance:

orphans their eyes exploding with

                                                     tears

men used to aim at their brothers

in the deadening sights of their rifles

these days the executioners type

“selected” codes into their computers

For an invisible death

in vain

                 children search

through the debris for their fathers,

mourn their mothers locked into the

                                                        black

of the unembraced;

they wander round the houses

in the deserted towns

then stand like

                        stone

life’s widows

who had donated;

barbed-wired

                          the borders

of hate

                 walls tall unfalling walls

the lightlessness in us has always reared its head

once-green trunks

refuse drifting

shards

carcasses

the aimless

(more and more men without)

the namelessfaceless herds

                                           numbers

the exiled the war-torn conscripts

non-E.E.C.

skin versus skin without

                                    ever

love;

low-lying clouds

on the red horizon

widespread blackness of

                                       man red

as always in the barbarity that is

                                                  war

but

now in our hearts we are building

                                                   peace

passing from the by now of what was to

                                                      what will be

utopian plan

                      a journey

of the whole

                       with a common equalising object;

to give the dumb and the gagged back their speech

the foreigner and the evicted a home

interweaving dialogue

to experience someone else’s

                                                    like us

beyond the treaty

the Governments’ deals (already regretted

the word lies

                      the pact is signed

and cancelled)

                       the meeting of

brothering glances

(brotherhood of eyes),

                                     a new syntax

the wordlessness of

                                glances

a free pass

out of the minefield;

to discover the tiny bloom amidst the leaves

the still waters of the riverbank the clear

                                                             water

to hear the symphonies of herbs on velvet

turf

          to struggle

for an egalitarian outlook,

a common may be

build parks of blooming

                                    children

polychrome infants

in the yellowing green

of the grass

                      gleam of milk-teeth

ivory in the smiles and multi-colored

                                                         glances

unblinkered eyes;

beyond the raisons d’ètat

of the Governments

                                against their profit

the non-profit of hands linked

in a ring-a-ring a-roses

that are dancing round the world

against the gagging by the Powers-that-be

the free polychrome

                                word

of the non-color of

                                 mankind

let there be peace

                                will be peace

the timelessspaceless

heart

             the we-whole

                                    of Is

turn battlegrounds

into playgrounds in which to fly

kites dreams hopes

the barbed wire turns into skipping rope

for the delight of uni-ethnic

                                           children

disarm weapons

sing shout peace

dance to drumming rhythms

tam tam go our heartbeats

hands that point to the skies

tattoo a dove

on the infinite

                         round world

of the belly of a pregnant woman,

ab ovo of will be

                           utopia;

there sleeps a nest which sows the seeds of

                                                                   love

(Translation by Susan Perry)

From verso l’at-tendere (2005)

© Piero Manni - San Cesario di Lecce