Salvatrice Interrotta :: Salvatore Poeta

(Elegia Bilingue a Due Voci)

Con te partirò.
Paesi che non ho mai
veduto e vissuto con te,
adesso si li vivrò.

Con te partirò
su navi per mari
che, io lo so,
no, no, non esistono più,
con te io li vivrò.

To “Sally” (July 17, 1916-March 8, 1958- April 2, 2008)

It was not in the middle of life but at the end, or in
the beginning.
She entered barefoot dragging across from station to station of muffled voices clamoring to divulge a long guarded secret…
as she headed toward the horizon.

A broken mirror choked on the scene as it plucked crusted petals of nostalgia from its nocturnal eyelids.
Way in the corner a sightless, muted tailor fits the form in its sculptured silence.
Meanwhile below dog specialists fight over the very last modicum of ripening flesh;
some vie for the lungs, others for the belly, still others piercing their needled fangs into blood-clotted kidneys draped over a desolate arm.
Beware all who enter this house,
leave behind all hope of transcendence
and bow to the flashing neon arrow pointing toward a healing!
How does it all go awry from the birth of precise, synchronized, supple illumination?
That would be or not be the question.
The silence is deafening, not even a whisper or a stir to alleviate your thirst for direction.

Oh no, there is no delirium here baby!
Albero corto fa buon frutto!
No sir, not here!
Che si vuol fare, tirare e campare!

Oh, to be back in those elysian fields of Piazza Armerina once again!
Tell me how did it feel the first time you took the trip?
Passaporti!
L’arrivo, alle sedici e trenta, l’otto marzo di mille novecento cinquant’otto!

Look, look at that little boy waving from the train with thorns sprouting from the irises of his eyes and finger tips glistening against its chromed indifference!
Watch as he wanders aimlessly among the crowded streets on the feast of the Assumption!
It isn’t he that needs an elegy to the heart, and besides
the trip from Battery Park is never as far as they preached;
it is only as long as the surgeon’s scalpel blade or the silvery wake a sky-blue convertible makes,
or the sewing needle the lonely nun staring down from the balcony holds in her right hand.
All aboard il Giulio Cesare!
Partenza, alle quattro e trenta, il due aprile di duemila otto.
Passports please!
The trip will take fifty years or so, so get comfortable for a long, turbulent journey because, you know,
Marzo è pazzo, tiraci con un masso
ma aprile è gentile, ci sorride con un baccio!
Captain, oh captain, head for the horizon just around the bend,
for there are still many roads left in these fur-lined slippers!
Partenza! Tutti abordo!

Salvatore Poeta
(Il due aprile di duemila otto)

WRITING & NAMING: the medicine of acquiring knowledge
Joseph Robertson

Language is that point of contact in the abstract, that plane where the intellectual life within us is enabled to assert itself as part of the overall experience of living. Language is that plane where the individual self is allowed repeated attempts at manifestation. What takes place in the process of writing, in the spilling of ink or the posting of digital characters, the slip toward defining a landscape, however brief, is the sanctification of an individual, and by extension of the human condition as such...

Not every person is a writer, by trade, nor should they be, but there is something about the act of writing that serves the writing individual as if it were a medicine for selfhood, a healing venture into clean waters. Especially so when its intent is to be expressive of secret regions of the mind or to lay out new experimental vessels for such expression. [Keep reading...]