by Dianella Bardelli

sono l’airone bianco e solitario,
e sono il papavero rosso, solo nella campagna —
e sono il nido vuoto
e sono il grano: dopo la pioggia splendo —
dentro di me
cova una gioia esasperata e grande
che esploderà un giorno,
un giorno, un giorno santo (2009)

I am

I am the white, lonely heron
and I am the red poppy, alone in the country —
and I am the empty nest
and I am the wheat: after the rain I shine —
within me
a great and exasperate pleasure brood
that one day will explode
one day
a holy day

by Dianella Bardelli

Allen Ginsberg andava ai Gat di Calcutta
dove la gente arrivava morta
e veniva bruciata su grandi pire —
ci andava per abituarsi a morire
per abituarsi all’idea di cos’è morire
essere morti —
era la sua terapia
la sua scuola di formazione —
dal punto di vista egoistico
vado per lo stesso motivo
all’Hospice
dove la gente è malata e muore —
poi c’è l’altro motivo:
che lì, non so perché,
sto bene (2011)

Allen Ginsberg was going to the Gat of Calcutta
where the people arrived dead
and were burned on great pyres —
he was going there to get accustomed to die
to get accustomed to the idea of what death is
to be dead —
was his therapy
his school of training —
from the egoistic point of view
I go for the same motivation
to the Hospice
where the people are ill and die —
after there is an other motivation:
that there I don’t know why
I feel well

                                                  Something Empedokles said,
when he was saying there’s a difference
                               between incarnation and incarceration,
                                         something about the curriculum, that
existence is where the soul goes to learn
                                     how to interpret itself again

by Duncan McNaughton

Collingwood had nothing better to do
than listen to this guy who was talking
in a type of Chinese, saying, I love
to think about Pasolini’s glow worm
take but I’ve never read his article.
Me neither, Collingwood said. What I got
of it was from Sciascia, I BAFFI
SALVATI. Me too, said the Chinese weirdo.
Who knows where they find these characters but,
like Ahab, you look behind you and they’re
steering the fucking boat. Then what? Poetry,
that’s what. Then the front buzzer buzzes, Fed
Ex from Medellin, Sophie Calle, right at
the same time the whores in Cartagena
are giving Obama’s protection a
lesson in how not to stiff working girls.
It’s not all Keats and Yeats and Emily
Dickinson, folks, not these days in Salò,
but don’t thank me. Listen. I don’t belong
here any more than Johnny Griffin did.