While in Italy I started a number of poems. The following three poems were begun in Sardinia and were observations of or responses to festival offerings.
around the grove
the trees speak
discreet words
from a sonorous voice
disembodied poems
overlapping images
knotted phrases
insistent love
forgotten promises
remembered betrayal
forgiveness unfastened
buzzing emotion
forms trails of words
poems climb through the branches
and hover beneath the leaves
As one entered the grove in Seneghe where many of the presentations were made one could immediately hear poems that were coming from speakers hung from the branches of several trees. The poems were not recited in unison, and it was the same deep, male voice calling out from each of the trees. If you did not see the very small speakers, it did indeed seem as if the trees were reciting poetry.
war observed
1.
as death melts into the earth
the living are dressed
with the spirits of their dead
pressed into heavy coats
and thick solid shoes
some men bend but do not fall
with the buildings around them
2.
there are moments
when all tears are spent
all howls quieted
and only the music of bombardment
and crumbling houses can be heard
is death complicated
or simply final
3.
grandmother now
she sits in a corner
of a room of refuge
one arm
gone
one leg
crushed
one husband
buried
one home
demolished
she does not name
those responsible
her truth is that
those who shoot
who bomb
who kill
do not fear god
or seek justice
only twisted revenge
her lips are welded
eyes neither embracing or
turning from the camera
4.
do not ask
ask the widow who
the child how
the mother why
or if there is value to
the dying
for dominion
for capital
for flags
that wave above graveyards
5.
only soldiers can stop it
soldiers cannot refuse to die
but they can refuse to kill
6.
the solution lives
in tears carried in
smoke filled wind
above the silences
that follow bombs collisions
7.
his lens sees only tragedy
the crumbled kitchen
the hollowed bedroom
the little girl
the baby
the mother
the son
the eyes forever frozen into discs
like the camera’s lens
frigid with the ice of terror
he puts the camera down
finds water for this one
lifts the body of that one
seeks another way to
hold back the war’s tide
***
american journalist
freshly shaved
new jacket
wallet full of money
for checkpoint guards
a well-paid lighting crew
does the american journalist
search for the best angle
from the safest place
does he have in mind
the story he wants
cropping the shot
just so
The poems were created from a photography presentation and discussion “War and It’s Representations” byGiulio Piscitelli (photojournalist)and Sabato Angieri (journalist) on the war in Ukraine that was moderated by Vito Biolchini held at the International Literary Festival “Cabudanne de sos poetas“ held in Sardinia in 2022. I understood the photos and only brief phrases of the discussion, but Rafaella Manzano helped me when I asked her specific questions. The poem evolved from the notes I made at the event.
autopsy of poems presented at a poetry reading
- context
when the skin is peeled back from the flesh
still clasping bone
when the intestines
are removed from the gut
the skull divided
until the grayed brain can be seen
the heart severed from the ribs
what does it do except affirm death
without even a glint of life
no less the poems words spread
lines questioned devices registered intent debated
as they stiffen under the rigor of surgical examination
- format
the poet read a poem
aways short almost never
filling more than a page
the interviewer then began
a line of questions long and circular
the poet answered as a river winding
and then the next poem was examined
- bones gathered from the languid autopsy
of poems
history
words
resistance
violence
because they are
i am
we write read remember
again and again
grand possibilities
need together
often
where are the grand passions
***
for the children again
poetry of sadness
tears
like songbirds
with wings folded
without nests
look at all
all is sadness
all of life only a moment
how does one say alone
speak of things
ancient
***
the butterflies do not
hear or understand
leaves fall regardless of the image
Elisa Donzelli read from her book Album and was in dialogue with the author Giovanna Frene International Litrary Festival “Cabudanne de sos poetas:held in Sardinia in 2022. I caught soe words and phrases and wrote them down, sometimes asking Raffaella about the meaning of a specific word or phrase. I missed far more than I captured and then reframed as the event seemed needlessly dry structured, as Raffaela said, as an autopsy of the poems.