Pierre Lepori
A selection from Qualunque Sia Il Nome (Whatever the Name)
Translated from the Italian by Peter Valente
from DIALOGUE
Again without rest
until the blank page is filled: each new beginning
counted on the palm of the hand,
is a new vigil, with one eye open,
a cry without echo.
It is not true that you have finished looking.
There is something that slowly destroys the comfort zone
of your recognizable fears. But to able to exist is already
one step you haven’t taken. Slowly,
very slowly, the evil is suffered and paid for.
Even fewer are those that recognize the One that exists.
And in this deafness the body has chosen,
you set out to prove
that you are not mute! Indeed, a flourish
of gestures. A flower
in a heap of stones, dormant and frail
in the cold sunlight.
------------------------
Why search among the dead? Everything shatters against
that nature which made you an orphan, because only the son
can produce a child. And this is not granted to her.
Offended or seized by laughter,
how many words are necessary to give voice to the silence?
Aren’t you perhaps the ambiguous one,
wounded by daring gestures,
so different from their ambitious
declarations of love.
--------------------------
But dig, then, dig,
ferrit, pet, spider
mole.
Because everything is now offered to you
like an array of sparkling lights. Again there is a train
and the blue and white shop sign in the early morning. Where is this?
In the dream the dream in the forest
of words. And if you hear the voices
speaking, listen. Things
continue to exist,
to halt the moment
in its weary eyed race
to final damnation.
------------------------
And now? In what direction
should you go? In the beginning
there was at least the forest, that turn
toward something that was named, the flesh wasn’t hidden.
Now
it’s like a meadow filled with weeds in the throes of a foaming hot sun,
the light of death that mocking sound in the silence. And there is an ache
as if it were the dawn after a forced march at night,
and it’s like a pain with a moderate voltage,
lasting a long time, and unexpected,
and no thought – at all – to cultivate
any voice in the desert.
-------------------------
from EYES SHUT
The days were rough
the shop and the washtub for the mothers
and a fine detachment for the fathers.
A white panama hat,
and travel overseas;
and the well-known secret the unspeakable
sin. How to tell the children
how to say it to the children’s children.
Snow and silence.
The silence
is exhausted by the attempt to keep silent.
The table has been prepared with skill
but this is not enough,
a shadow falls each time the child laughs.
The bastard son
of words.
-------------------------
Sleep.
And nothing else.
No dreams, only tossing and sweating
in a bed of duties and fees to be paid, until the volcanic dawn rises.
(I lost my child.
It’s not important.)
-------------------------
from EYES WIDE OPEN
It’s a headache that besieges you
up from the base of the skull and from behind
it’s a tightening that freezes. Seek to medicate
this persistent agony;
Yet it’s certain that behind this
stiff neck there is a way
of standing on one’s own two feet despite the cost
under this hailstorm of memories.
-------------------------
Only occasionally a human voice calling you, you acknowledge it with a whisper,
and the joy on your face drips like wax,
the world starts to throb and pulsates with the voice and the pain. And you’ll decipher
it tonight, embracing the mirror of a poem,
the duty, without rules, of truth.
-------------------------
from FORMS OF WATER
The body is a wall
behind which there is silence,
where the arms are immerged,
a dark and indifferent pool,
because if the child calls out and expects an answer,
there is only darkness
the night is long
and it’s better not to hope.
-------------------------
from BROTHERS
6.
So, despite the fact that we wanted
to embrace under the threat of stones and abuse,
there was someone who said: “Incest”
and so full of love for us
for our bluish wrists
that he tightened the rope and rubbed out the name
until what remained
was just an empty word, “brothers.”
Exactly like everyone else
like the generations that preceded us
in the illusion that denied non-love
could be a kind of love.
-------------------------
8.
Those who say ‘No’, are like a sabre
arriving on the frontlines a cold wind of death
and a deafening noise of shame,
those who remain become a knife
and to live on the edge of a knife
takes courage
or perhaps only pain.
-------------------------
9.
How can you not be afraid
that we’ll all die, with this sound of hissing
that makes the long night unbearable?
How can you stand to be alone in such darkness
and not wonder if we could face
the night embracing each other,
the night like slime that covers our heads,
children on the damp sheets of a bed where
we would all suffocate at the same time?
-------------------------
from PURGATORY
They still speak
those who can speak,
groaning and sighing below,
but they are the voices and faces of those inside,
sunk at the bottom but still leading,
hoarse masks of blackmail.
Don’t look down,
tightrope walker!
Step
by step,
while down below,
they shout and try to make you fall,
into the mud
this region
filled with spiders and scorpions.
Step
by step,
even though they are at the bottom
they fake everything,
paradise and hell,
and their moans.
-------------------------
3.
And finally
here it is like a dream
without a landslide in time you find yourself
praying alone
just over the edge.
No god on the horizon,
but the faint shadow of a song
that welcomes you,
and warmth.
How much longer can you bear
this raising of sheets to the wind
and these sparkling meadows
this near awakening?
-------------------------
After a night like this
the walls are soaked with rain:
a quarter of light, a small quarter of light
and all the rest in shadow. But out of range,
and despite this, a strand of agony still
tears at the flesh.
-------------------------
And this light
was present just before the storm,
this clarity that spreads and consoles.
For an instant the universe
is absorbed into this spear of light
and in the silence perpetually active.
-------------------------
from DRIFTING
The body rebels against both evil and good,
the muscles contract and interweave the legs
and the voice at the bottom of the throat
(the contraction of two muscles
and the left vocal chord that refuses to stretch
and the other parts of you that protrude
as if you had silenced too many things
because the body doesn’t rebel).
-------------------------
In the evening, already very late, here, during the winter,
there is a light that emerges from the depths,
a strip of white behind the buildings and the sky
a gray that fades into the blue that is frightening.
Gleam of anger,
behind the surface of a gaze,
the torn cloth of conscience.
Before nightfall,
and before continuing the bitter reality of the dream,
in this moment, in the final light and darkness,
there is a ceasefire and you are permitted to live.
Everything else is fleeing
and the night is sinking under sedation.
-------------------------
from BROTHERS II (The Meaning of Battle)
There is exile only from yourself
and a private pain is a minor thing.
Alone, crying inside, is not
screaming along with everyone.
But if life has any meaning
then marching with anger beneath the windows
and with contempt for the past
is a way of saying
“We,” “We, Everyone.”