The shadow of a god walks round inside me,
a time that comes from bones, from life, from years,
an air of memory and of tomorrow...
I wish I could talk to that god, feel him in me,
listen to his wisdom, and surrender,
learn I am his, and who I am.
But that shadow comes and goes, and I'm far away,
and only feel the air of thoughts
bringing emptiness, and after that
the evenings come.
You, god, who hide yourself and have no mercy,
look for the dogs, and listen if it's me,
'cause man is dead, he's got no memory.
Oh, while I'm drowning, let me breathe once more!
Let life be life, and not that nothingness
that when we think about it
suddenly makes us blanch,
and makes us feel how bitter is life.
For I'm a mirror of death, I'm full of sleep,
but inside me I still feel the throb
of that bold grace we throw away
into time, into the wind.
I wish I could forget myself
and walk, and breathe for you;
I wish I could be like children,
who let the sun, when it gets hold of them,
scatter them where it wants, like seed,
I wish I could lose myself,
understand nothing of myself,
just enjoy the air dragging me
where life thinks about itself living.
How many people dead on a road
history has passed and not seen,
that thread of a generous hope
that my own shadow belongs to it;
how many people dead on a road
seem to wait and don't wait any more,
and the air passes, and runs off far away,
where people dream that life
stays, though hidden, and will come back some day.
Houses and fields are passing, the train runs on,
the trees are passing, fast, as if just invented,
rivers and woods are passing, people are passing,
and what I look at is already gone.
But how slowly this train I'm on is running,
oh, as I breathe, how much farther it has gone!
In things that pass lies the breath of my life
as in a dying man lies his awakening.
How many times, while riding on a train,
I see the world, there, and I'd like to stop,
and walk in there among the stony houses,
a stranger to men, and there look for myself,
among them, as you would look for a god,
as if people there might have some news about it,
some memory, or, maybe, just the treason...
But why get off the train? In here I'm only
a soul that's breathing, a reflection of them,
if I look and look there, I won't find anything,
or maybe just our griefs, maybe just death.
When a train's running, and I see down there a village,
a sort of homesickness takes hold of me.
I know those streets, and they're unknown to me,
and the people are hurrying on their way.
But I'm here behind the window, staring out,
I want to get up, and I restrain myself,
it's the train's job to carry me -quietly- on.
It' hard to talk to a people of the dead;
I prick my ears up, and they're no longer there.
They're deaf, they're blind, and their tongues are twisted.
Cold memory, the colour of times past,
Milan made of hydroxide, cars howling,
empty streets where blind men
can't find each other anymore.
I wish I could think about you, God,
I wish I could know, but my thoughts
of you are just my thoughts,
they are like steam coming out of me, a sickness
sweating hope, hope of a time to come...
But God, don't let me think! Steam fades away
and I'm still walking about in you, asleep,
just like an idiot warming himself in the sun
and the air doesn't see him, but it breathes him in,
and thoughts are all made of air,
and life is warm, the sun is real.
The old life is new, at my window:
leaves move, and light comes to me.
Alone, full of myself, I'm like that cloud
that's got inside it the calm of being there.
Oh God, how we rejoice at nothing at all!
Such would be life, without the anxiety
of men who seem in haste to kill each other,
without these human dogs that steal
our time and breath and memory and years,
without our jealousy, and secret loves
which make the joy of breath a torment.
I'm alone, I'm singing, I look up at that cloud
so full of me and of its age-old look at me.
I embrace time, and it carries me away,
as the wind does when it breathes you,
and it seems to you you're breathing with its breath.
O cursed consciousness of history,
old air of people who died following dreams,
lie that persuades you it's life
when it's nothingness passing into memory,
patience that is the enemy of time,
breath that's misting a mirror no one looks in.
Oh light, that's dusk already when we see it,
pain of being made of an air that we know well.
I look, I don't look, I touch the silence,
reflection of nothingness
that turns it into hearing.
Look back, with no intention, as you do
when thoughts slide off into the air,
look back from habit, slowly, for no reason,
like women who turn their head toward a man
in the street, at home, or at the door,
look back for interest in some distant sound,
or in some swallow circling in the sky,
look back not knowing why, at the direction
of some odd thought, some lie,
look round to go back home: for here forgotten
behind your shoulders here I am, to steal
that nothing of your walk, your walking off.
Maybe I've shivered as the icy stars do,
not with the cold, and not with fear,
and not for grief or happiness or hope,
but at that nothingness that goes all over
the sky and breathes on earth, which gives it thanks...
Maybe it's been the way that your heart shivers
when in the night the moon goes down,
or morning comes and the brightness seems to die
and it's life that's coming back to being life...
Maybe it's been like people shiver together,
like that, not knowing nothing, as God wants...
Your heart moves among men, with no one knowing.
Listen how fast the train runs between houses.
We shall arrive at night, in the gloomy light,
where no one waits for us, in the place we know.
Oh night, I saw you coming to frighten me,
and I was lonely as a dog,
I was there, hiding myself from the air,
and the air was looking for me, the air was me.
The night was the night, the moon was the moon,
and I was pleasing to the stars above me.
Life is so short that we
just start to think about it, and we're gone.
We look for ourselves, we want to hold onto ourselves,
and we want life, but life was in the search.
For our memory of the way is a puff of air,
and the house where we arrive is empty,
the place we're in has a strong smell of nothing,
and we have dust in our hearts and under our shoes.
We clutch at our memory in the air,
and all the time we are beyond our steps.
I want to feel far away from myself,
because I'm rarely in myself, I'm always out.
I'm there saying: "Wait, I'll go and look for..."
And while I'm gone, my scattered hope
comes looking for me here,
and I'm where God seems to be waiting for me,
where He and I both despair of finding me.
I never had so much to endure in love:
feeling so far away, and doomed to look for myself.
It's raining, winter's coming, the men without faces
are walking under umbrellas toward their fate...
How many umbrellas, lifted in air, are moving,
how many men walking and we don't see them!
Let me guess who that is going into the distance...
And who's that shouting? Who does that dog belong to?
The shoulders under the rain are worth whole lives,
the voices shouting we can leave to shout.
It's certainty that drives you mad.
For man, when he's afraid, maybe he's reasoning,
and when he's trembling, maybe he's brave,
but when he looks into the face of things,
then comes the wish to be mad.
Why walk around in the dark? And why this room?
Only the moon comes in through the deep windows,
and it looks as if we're in a lonely street,
and we're keeping out of people's way from grief.
Why do we stretch for hands and feel the air?
There' some champagne, some grapes there on a plate,
and we feel cold, and fear, it seems like fear,
and if someone speaks, love does not seem to come...
We're distant in the dark, and in the room
there is our smell, and noise, and desperation.
The moon there, through the window, talks to us
about people coming and going in the world,
and we stay here, in hiding.
Il poeta Franco Loi
Pagina editata da Tommaso Leddi:
leddit@tiscalinet.it
Last updated: 11.5.2000