The weeping Muse mourns Homer,
Mourns the days of long song,
Mourns for the breath of the singers,
Winds stretching out,
seas pulling to eastward,
Heaving breath of the oarsmen,
triremes under Cyprus,
The long course of the seas,
The words woven in wind-wrack,
salt spray over voices.

Ezra Pound, draft of Canto VIII

Pino Blasone

Chimeras Land

Minor Cantos
or Myths in Verse

Index

A butterfly and the statue
A Gothic Orpheus
A parlour game
Alcestis’ dream
Aquarium phobia
Ariadne’s god
Calypso’s hair
Cassandra’s gift
Colonus Station
Fruit of oblivion
Leucothea’s veil
Park of Remembrance
Penelope’s web
Perseus’ blunder
Prometheus’ claim
Psyche’s fault
Railway Eurydice
Sphinx’s riddle
Suburban labyrinth
The Golden Fleece
Thespis’ Chariot
Ulysses’ voices

A BUTTERFLY AND THE STATUE

You know, I was that idol
sacred image of Aphrodite
sculptured by Pygmalion
in the happy Cyprus isle.
Soon he burnt with desire
for his maiden masterpiece
and asked the love goddess
to make it alive; at last,
such a miracle got worked.
The ivory idol moved slow,
coming down from its base
held up by a friendly hand,
and looking around stunned
wondered if she was or not.

My flesh is soft; my skin,
as white as milk. The body
is well made, since was so
devised as to give pleasure
though feeling none at all.
There is a hard gist inside
my heart, for which I never
may be at peace with myself.
I was born already an adult,
such that I cannot remember
a childhood, keep no memory
of anything less than late.
And all little I have learnt
I did from my gentle husband,
so am grateful for it to him.

Nevertheless, often at night
I fear to get a statue again
from a moment to another and
touch my skin to feel it warm.
Suddenly I get up from my bed,
testing if still now I may move
with any limb of this fair body.
Or I prick a finger by a needle
and enjoy the sight of my blood
dropping red on a white pillow,
at the yellow gleam of a lamp.

To wait for the light of dawn
in front of this open window
and to breathe some cool air,
as fearful of not waking up.
Even humans are said to go
subject to awes like mine,
but their minds may wander
so far as to think of many
different matters at least.
What ever can be attractive
for a statue with no fancy?
At a daybreak, a butterfly
flies into the room tracing
the shade with its colours.

An old tale wants the soul
to have wings of butterfly,
and to know paths in the air
leading as up as the azure.
Lady of our island, when you
liked to give me some life,
had to be cautious and wise:
you gave me a sterile womb.
So prevented from begetting
a race of monsters, I feel
like petrified by the gaze
of Medusa with a snaky hair
and with her inhuman sneer.

“No, you are not a statue”,
so my king is consoling me,
woken by a ray of sunlight,
“Indeed, you are never been.
I will beg the goddess again
to concede us a son”. I know
he lies with a good aim and
he ascribes to me yearnings
I was not allowed to nurse.
Yet let me too dare a feint,
to be as kind as he is to me:
“You are right, it is nothing
but a passing fancy. By time,
all will return to the norm”.

Then he is calling me by name,
but this does not belong to me
and I can scarce remember it,
so that I may be slow to turn
if I hear its sound: Galatea.
I would like a name mine own,
what was found out by myself,
yet I think it cannot be done.
Maybe we all are a bit statues,
longing for awakening. Anyone
is in danger of being turned
back to cold marble, like in
a museum where the only life
is a butterfly which has flown
once into there by mere chance.


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A GOTHIC ORPHEUS

The porch turning round
the square of the court
looks as exact as a clock
with its spaced pillars,
with its suite of arches.
And at the border between
light and shade, an angel
kneeling to a pale virgin
exorcises a certain death,
predicts a dubious rebirth.

I dreamt I was dreamed
by a fast asleep being,
whose main function is
to dream of many worlds
with no hurry to wake up.
Or I dreamt of me unborn,
imprinted like a snapshot
in the film of the universe
during a fraction of second.

Like framed in the vision
of spires and of ogives
now a figure of woman,
very slight in her hips
and with a small breast,
tosses within the walls
of a glass shower-booth
under the jet of water
in a warm steamy cloud.

I dreamt of this world
at last close to an end
and of new worlds else,
which urge to be born.
I dreamt to penetrate
into that narrow body,
as deep as the device
what produces images,
smells sounds colours
and tangible realities.

But she escaped my hug,
running away as far as
the brink of an abyss.
So here I sit and mourn
her death before time,
waiting for the Maenads
who dance around a fire
or even for bad Furies
to dismember my flesh,
unable to hush the song
which echoes the regret
along the chain of worlds.


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A PARLOUR GAME

Closed inside a cage
made of mirror walls,
during its endless run
shown by luminous leds
lighting up and going out
in quick succession, you
watch the count-down on
the metallic deal, till
a no body voice spells
"underground floor..."

Then the door slides
opening in the silence,
and you a bit wavering
do cross the threshold
of this dark wide hall,
where all looks faint
while your long shadow
falls on a squared light.

Soon a spot lights up,
an applause is heard.
Here he is, who plays
sitting at the grand,
stroking by his hands
black and ivory keys,
and a red scarf wraps
his neck and hangs down
from his bent shoulders.

A violinist is rambling
among the empty chairs;
he wrings jarring notes
from a fiddle out of tune.
There is an acrobat too,
hanging from the ceiling
of the high concert-hall,
flying below the vault
frescoed with the myth
of the ancient Orpheus.

With a little suspense
everyone is expecting
a thread going to break,
from a moment to another
the acrobat falling down
in the middle of the room.
Thus we might get aware
he is none but a dummy,
it is only a joke to make
the party not too boring.

Each one wears a mask,
any of them is the same.
What can be done then,
who will be the real one?
Nothing but a silly game,
such is all your chance.
Much better you retrace
your own steps, Eurydice,
before he could speak
and you shall not know
his voice, just before
that mask is taken off
and you must see no face.


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ALCESTIS’ DREAM

With a sluggish gesture
the female being combs
her long and soft hair,
sitting before a mirror
too opaque to reflect.
And a few gold threads
fall down on the floor,
within transparent walls
where big clocks climb
and weave their webs.

You remember no more
or pretend you forgot,
Alcestis. Despite this,
I dared to query once
what you could discern
when the bold Hercules
snatched you from Death
wrestling with the genius,
and rent his dark veil off
pushing him back to hell.
“Nothing,” you answered
me, “an absolute nothing”.

A phone which shrieks,
squat in some a corner,
is a self with no memory.
It shakes while sleeping
under its thick eyelids,
meddled with the noise
of too many speeches,
troubled by nightmares
thrown up by the retches
of a removed conscience.

“Do not urge me, dear,
to stir up such anguish
I felt down there, when
my soul was pulling off
from my body and I saw
a reflection of myself
looming upon the fen,
the boat with no weight
coming near that shore.
You know the nice fable
about Psyche, taken away
by Eros: I was by Death”.

The town is still alive
beyond these windows,
prodigiously unharmed
and free from disasters
announced by the telly,
while the woman strips
reluctantly of her veil.
Then she walks moving
by a time without music
and her dress slips down
on the floor of the room.

“Let us try to live again,
Admetus. If you like it,
I will say mine has been
nothing but an ugly dream,
not to mention the effects
of drunkenness on the hero
who prevailed over Death.
How many times Hercules
bragged about his deeds
and we did lend our ears,
just only to please him!”

It must be some world
out of this narrow one,
so made of fancy myths
that we may enjoy there
a different life at last,
or even it be possible
we have already lived.
Or else a life whichever,
flowing back to memory
of a reviving ego inside
the womb of the woman,
standing by the window.


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AQUARIUM PHOBIA

All of a sudden in a new morning
flights of birds cross the soul
from left to right, like notes
written on a pale violin score.
And such soul is named Eurydice
as the heroine of an old legend,
able to hear Orpheus’ music even
though fallen asleep into death.
She was longing for some a glare,
the gleam of a daybreak in autumn
when light is dropping into shade
like milk into a cup of black tea.

I feel her sitting in front of me
but never I do let my sheet down,
even less daring to raise my eyes.
Nay I show me absorbed in playing,
as afraid to see her fading away
(gods forbade to look at her face
before cleared by a full sunlight,
according to the myth I have read).
She stands up going to the window,
staring outward so that I may see
now only her blond drooping hair,
through her transparent shoulders
dark bricks of an opposite house.

“My life was such:” she complains,
“a short sight on red brick walls,
a murmur of boiling water in a pot,
an echo of a fiddle from next room.
Sure your music is a winning spell,
can be so soft as to deaden a brute
or so sharp as to wake up the dead.
Yet I never saw wild beasts to mate
and death is an abode with no doors.
Please, stop playing on and at last
let me sleep an endless empty night
not eager for an impossible revival.
Take the courage to look at myself”.

“You are right”, I try to reply her,
“Only wild beasts I saw were inside
transparent tiny eggs, when visited
an aquarium once. I was just a boy.
I watched them through a tick pane,
a sweet low music flowed all around.
Those began to open all of a sudden,
many little fierce sharks swam out,
then a deep dread gave me a shudder.
Death must be similar to that place”.
“You are wrong”, she whispers back,
“Such memory and life may be alike.
I wish not to relive any like that!”


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ARIADNE’S GOD

When was found by sailors
they could hardly know her,
so in tatters and roaming
like any wild animal about
the woody and desert isle,
that we Greeks call Naxus.
She announced them a god,
coming to dispense ecstasy
and visions of eternal life
(he had made her his bride,
raising her up to the stars).
But did not speak of Theseus,
so I had become a mere name
in her mind; even her sister
she seemed having forgotten.

The seamen had pity on her,
soon sailing back to Crete
so as to return his daughter
to king Minos, with the hope
to be rewarded by him for it.
He showed unwonted indulgence
toward the rebel maid; nay he
bad to treat her as a goddess,
if only she would stay apart
in a small temple on the top
of a mountain, left alone to
venerate her own wonder god.
Do not gods live by the sky?
Slowly, void elapsing years
reminded Ariadne of the past.

She recalled when forsaken
by Theseus and the treason
of Phaedra, while the ship
of two lovers ran the blue
so far as to disappear at
the horizon, and herself
left weeping on the shore
(her thread should be vain,
in such labyrinth of waves).
What I was reduced to then
you may scarce imagine now:
so I got seduced by Phaedra
the younger of two sisters,
as to break any old promise
and to act with no scruples.

Ariadne appealed to her god
invoking some a revenge, or
rather for justice be done.
Perhaps Dionysus lent an ear
to her claim. Later Phaedra
became my new wife and she
fell a prey to insane love,
though not returned I deem,
towards my son: Hippolytus.
The end of this tragedy is
well known, since the poets
were inspired to sing of it
mourning their early death.
So did I, for all my pride.

What maybe you cannot know
is when I met Ariadne again.
She was leading a chorus of
Maenads to a feast in Athens,
while I was lord of the town.
In her expressive mien I saw
some beloved Phaedra’s grace,
yet her gesture was measured
like the movement of a clock.
Her voice had changed too; it
sounded like an echo flowing
out from a conch, if you are
listening to it by your ear.

“At last you do not lack any
power,” she said, “and surely
earned it with a long trouble.
Once we entered the Labyrinth
as dark as our souls, and did
presume to have won a monster
born by the womb of my mother.
But you must know, the death
of whom you lost before time
is a source of my same regret.
The glory of Crete is setting
and my only comfort is in god,
a god who is close to ground.
Now I ask for what you owe me:
to grant us a pious reception,
if you like our shared memory”.


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CALYPSO’S HAIR

Please, let me tell you
of Calypso the sea-nymph,
with her blue flowing hair.
It was so long as to wrap
and hide the whole island,
whose mysterious name is
Ogygia: more an indistinct
sound than a name indeed,
to such an extent seamen
did avoid pronouncing it,
because afraid of storms.

I remember also her gift.
She promised to make me
immortal, if only I would
remain in her wonder isle.
There I could be no more
Ulysses, I mean this one
you can see and may touch.
At most, a phantom alike
the waves will call Nobody,
who outlived a wreck once
and listens to the earplug
of a radio, begging news
from a world he is cut off.

Yes, to wander for ever
and to collect the pearls
about those golden sands,
feeding gentle dolphins
which swim among reefs
coming to skim my hands:
such life does not suit me,
I said to her whispering.
Meanwhile the long hair
gathered upon her head,
into a bun dropping light.

She did not speak at all.
Since then on, her song
kept silent and so Ogygia
became an isle like others,
one of those the skippers
mark on their pilot charts
to let rich trippers land.
Plastic bags, empty bottles
or even used condoms began
to strand on its nice beach.
I felt lucky then, my raft
was ready to get off shore.

Soon I could sail again
searching for a new isle
or rather for an old one,
where the gods and nymphs
are fine and holy statues
standing behind the altars,
and where nobody occurs to
get wrapped by their hair,
but a poor light proceeds
from the candles lighted
by fair hands of weavers.


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CASSANDRA’S GIFT

The deceitful Sirens’ song,
the undone web of Penelope,
the cut off head of Medusa,
the trophy of Golden Fleece
the bewitched wand of Circe
and winged Sphinx’s riddles
or the trick of Trojan Horse:
so often the sense of myths
is turning around an object.
Like the moon among clouds,
it lights him who descends
into the past, to discover
seeds of future down there.

I may foretell main events
with no hope to be trusted:
such the object of my pain,
a gift and mockery of gods
jealous of destiny decrees,
who made proverbial the name
of myself daughter of Priam
the king of an unlucky town.
Now I am prisoner on a ship,
which is ploughing the waves
driven by the winning chief.
And I know what must expect
in his homeland, but can do
nothing to avert the danger.

How many times I did wonder
whether I foresee the morrow
or rather remember yesterday
maybe taking one for another,
till a voice came to call me:
“Cassandra!”. Then two arms
began to shake me carefully,
to bring me back to present.
How I would like to hear now
that homely voice or to feel
those arms clasping myself!
Yet nobody is here, so nice
as to do that; no one more,
able to guide my steps out
from this inhospitable time.

She never forgave you the
sacrifice of your daughter,
for asking the fickle gods
a success in the last war.
In a dark palace at Mycenae
Clytemnestra the bad queen
already sharpens the blade,
in concert with her lover.
They plot to kill the king
with his slave, Cassandra,
as reached the Greek land.
But you will not listen to
such a warning, Agamemnon,
or you regard it a slander,
a crazy fruit of my grudge.

Not yet Electra or Orestes,
who are your survived sons,
may discern on their hands
the red blood of the mother
and of the usurper Aegisthus,
they will shed to avenge you.
But you rejoice at your win
and expect some a triumphal
welcome from your subjects.
Not sate with its slaughter,
any war drags after itself
a long chain of new crimes.
That is why gentle dolphins
do not swim around your ship
and mews screech flying away.

Sitting in front of the blue
with my chin on a wood board,
I scan the void horizon before
while the sail is hanging from
the mast, deserted by the wind.
I wish the wind never to rise
or it shall blow so strong as
to sink this hull into the sea.
And my mind sees again the town
where I grew up, with its walls
and houses, streets and gardens.
Also I see the faces of so many
dear ones, who live no more now.

They did not believe either in
my boring predictions, so that
I got persuaded to keep silent
and to suspect of my previsions,
a girl affected with melancholy
just dubious about her own look.
This I learnt from my own myth:
in spite of appearances, people
do not love to know the future;
they prefer to live an illusion,
even if incurring in old errors.


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COLONUS STATION

Some empty mornings
of the week-days, when
an old age goes limping
in the railway stations
of the suburban lines,
then a blind guy comes
to sit on the benches
of the waiting rooms,
where a big wall-clock
chews the time and spits
its seeds on the floor.

A nomad girl guides
and accompanies him.
She moves like dancing
and plays an instrument
with so many strings,
whose name got lost.
Yet the old man sings
in a strange language,
with a mournful voice.
He holds out his hand
toward the passengers,
while his ears listen to
the sound of their steps.

What does his song mean?
A friend who is a traveller
has summed it up for me;
there is not much to trust,
all the same I tell you that
you may believe it or not.
The tale deals with a palace
high in the centre of a town,
watched by a winged virgin
keeping foreigners away
from the ring of its walls
by proposing odd riddles.

“I myself,” so Oedipus says,
“was turned into an enigma
in order to win the monster,
to be introduced into court,
to gain the crown of Thebes.
Do not rely on the oracles,
skip the traps of the Sphinx.
How it would be better if
I lived the life of nomads,
instead of getting forced
to become aware of myself,
in the shade of those walls!”


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FRUIT OF OBLIVION

To forget the homeland,
with whatever familiar.
To forget the long war,
its deaths and mourning
and its scars impressed
in our flesh and souls.
To forget all the worry
and let the living live
if and as gods pleased.
Let the dead get buried
by the dead, so as once
a subtle poet dared say.

All such, nothing else
was the gift of gentle
forgetful Lotus-eaters.
If we consider it well,
that looks so innocent.
But it was as a danger
as the song of Sirens,
the charmers of the sea
who were wont to arouse
by their winning voices
every trouble submerged
deep in our consciences.

I did prevent my mates
eating that sweet fruit,
offered to us foreigners
by denizens of the place.
Yet I tasted it secretly,
as we were back on board
and the ship sailed off
those quicksand shores.
The billows calmed down
and the sky cleared too
before these raving eyes,
though a bad storm began
to rage against my crew.

Still today not seldom
the effect of such fruit
outshines my mind again.
It makes my memory fail
and myself like cut out
from any reality around.
Then I do know my island
no more; even my worthy
wife becomes a stranger,
she weaving by her loom
and living with this old
sailor who lost his ship
nor could save his crew.

I know, it will be a day
when I shall leave again,
with an oar on my shoulder
and a small sack of salt
hanging down from my hand,
got so forgetful at last
as to be not able to find
the way leading back home.
I will be no more Ulysses
but a chap whose real name
is Nobody, lost in a people
who are ignorant of the sea
and do not speak my tongue,
what foreseen by a prophet
once in the realm of shades.


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LEUCOTHEA'S VEIL

At first it was a white mew,
spreading its lonely wings
and balancing up in the wide.
Then it flew down in circles
narrower and narrower, till
perched at an end of my raft
(or this was a floating cage,
similar to those Circe used
to shut wolves and boars in).
At last assumed a human look:
she was a young and fair woman,
wearing a bikini made of shells
and over that a very fine veil.

“Really I know you” I said her
through my parched throat, just
wandering in a labyrinth inside,
“You are an artist and a model.
You were living at the Village
and painting abstract pictures
with more than hundred colours,
each one as bright as a canto.
I kept a photo of you, always
carried with me, but I lost it
because of a wreck. If I missed
my friends and even my homeland,
it is fault of such a collapse”.

“I know it well” she answered,
with a silken smile on her lips
(her face was petal and corolla),
“I know all of you. You may call
me Circe, Siren or Calypso, even
Penelope; indeed, you know me too.
My name is Ino or else Leucothea,
that one who had thrown herself
from a high cliff into the waves.
Gods saved her as a sea goddess.
Since then on I succour sailors
who happen to lose their course,
in the perennial flow of events”.

I did want to reply and to ask
about such a dangerous secret,
if there was some an acceptable
compromise, maybe an honest way
to escape from so many errors
and horrors. So, that I could
reach any port without drifting
for ever, rejected as an exile
all over. Again she had turned
seagull and dove into the water,
going to re-emerge too far away
and grasping a fish by its bill.

On board of my raft, she had left
her tattooed cloth. I caught it
before might be stolen by a gust
and made a girdle of such a veil.
By it, I bound up my hips fast.
Soon I felt restored with force
and courage, once more feeling
to be Ulysses. All of a sudden,
an earth had risen at the horizon.
An old isle with a rocky skyline
stood in the middle of the foam.

I heard the voice of the wind,
which blew up the swells again.
It was singing the last canto
and said: “Now, or never more”.
While came untied all the laces
which held those logs together,
these creaked as if they moaned.
Before they were pushed to float
all around on the salty surface,
I dove and swam to the new land,
left my raft dismembered behind
at the mercy of its stormy lot.


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PARK OF REMEMBRANCE

Once in a long while,
hardly with nostalgia,
to get on an old tram
running through the fog
on its silent rails inside
a dark womb of the town.
It reminds an early ship
driven by oar-strokes
above the hidden depths,
on inhospitable waters
where voices turn dull,
any sound does not echo
like bodies with no shade.

Next stop is a scrubby
and a neglected garden
in the midst of a square,
strewn with used syringes
and with smashed bottles.
Within its rusty gratings,
amid its upset benches,
you can occur to bump
into wandering animals
who became wild again
and are said they were
men and women indeed.

Park of Remembrance, so
this place is called as
maybe it was in the past.
Yet nobody remembers that
but Circe the drug-dealer;
she repeats an odd story,
staring with her dim eyes:
“I see games of children,
couples of young lovers
and bushes of white roses.
There was a roundabout too,
quite like the Karma-wheel
which mills each one’s life
according to what is due”.

“Then the roses withered
and those pairs broke up,
that roundabout did stall.
But never the wheel stops,
so that no one may go down
after he got on such device.
I know it well, since I am
its guardian and its hostage.
And if it may console you
this is all for any other,
is what people do not know,
rather pretend they do not
even in the heart of Ithaca”.

“Ithaca is no more,” Ulysses
replies, “or it never existed.
The home-island is a mirage,
the best of your many tricks,
what I realized already before
sailed from your chimeras land.
In spite of this you went on,
ye mistress of any illusion,
to tell me about every night
as if I well knew that island,
until I got convinced it was
in my memory a real place”.

“I made use of my art,” such,
the apology of the sorceress,
“because I could not believe
you were going to leave me,
ye alone of so many others.
Or perhaps I hoped you were
pleased to take me with you.
So often I dreamt of Ithaca,
a land lighted by a true sun
where clouds do not conceal
the horizon for ever and ever.
And a house with high walls,
with a shed around its court
out of sight from the world”.


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PENELOPE’S WEB

Nothing new in Ithaca,
round its streets where
yellow traffic lights
light up and go out,
yawning on their posts
at the night crossroads.
In the shop windows
spellbound manikins
mime a mystery play,
their trite dumb show.

Let us leave tomorrow
on endless highways,
paved with the light
of an early shiny day;
a last look backward
at the town left behind
under its glass vault,
with the camera eyes
pointed on the squares,
with the yell of hooters
piercing its own bowels.

Inside a dreamy palace
there is a quiet room,
which has no mirrors
neither even windows.
One night more Penelope,
weaver of myths, undoes
what she will do again.
There are no wrinkles
on her beautiful face,
her fingers are nimble
typing on the keyboard.

Fires lighted by whores
and carcasses of cars,
stacked along the roads
which branch off from
the deep heart of Ithaca,
while a soft Siren song
runs through the stereo
of lonely sleepy motels,
to fascinate the senses
of tired truck-drivers.

In the lit up screen,
whose green glimmer
illuminates the room
like a ray of moonlight,
she shams the Labyrinth,
where the Minotaur still
makes his bellows echo
and the young Icarus
is ready to fly away,
dazzled with the glare
of sun upon a blue sea.

Elsewhere Ulysses stops
before a washing machine:
while its device works,
its port-hole reminds him
the sole eye of the Cyclops.
Later he injects into veins
the drug of Lotus-eaters,
watching for the scene
of a waste Troy on fire
replays within his mind.

Ariadne’s fine thread
hardly unravels from
a tangled skein. At last,
it breaks and hangs down
from the hand of Theseus,
which twists like an olive
in its space with no time.
Just so a writing web grows
beyond any measure on its
failing support, and soon
it tears in weaver’s hands.


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PERSEUS’ BLUNDER

Do you remember Medusa?
By now few old men tell
she had been not always
as depicted in the myth
which people hand down.
She seems to have been
a girl like others once,
even fairer than others,
before a hard punishment
for some fault whichever
or the mere envy of gods
changed her into a freak.

Made snake alike, her hair
hissed, twisted and kinked
round the disfigured face.
Her tongue became red and
began to ooze with blood.
Especially her glance got
as dangerous as a weapon,
such as whoever occurred
to meet it by his own gaze
fell converted into stone.

That is why I looked at her
while reflected by my shield
more polished than a mirror,
for I could escape the peril
and cut off her horrid head
by a curved and sharp sword.
Soon after I caught the head
as a trophy of a too easy win,
but its hair had turned smooth
and soft to my great surprise.

Since their spell was broken
the blind eyes could not harm,
and they stared into the void
as innocent as child’s eyes.
I seemed to see inside them
something like a dumb claim
against such an absurd fate,
or rather an extreme question
which would receive no reply
both from men and from gods.

Too late I had pity on her,
so that with remorse I did
recompose that maiden body
and gave it a human burial.
This is all, do not rely on
such rumour I kept the head
to rout my foes by its gaze.
It is only a macabre story,
spread by backbiting ones
with a morbid imagination.

Since then on, her phantom
is wont to visit my dreams
like the shade of a victim
which pursues his murderer.
I am haunted with a doubt:
she was not such a monster
as people like to believe,
nor I could find just one
got petrified by her spell.
How many real monsters are
rambling about this world,
you may scarce discern them
as they learnt to dissemble!


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PROMETHEUS’ CLAIM

To force the shutter
of a washing machine
in order to get away
gravitating up there
in the form of a spiral,
so far as to be stopped
by the ceiling of the room
like the Genius of the Lamp
or a balloon for children.
Yet nobody will be so kind
as to climb on some chair
and pull the thread down,
so as to lead you back
to a reasonable height.

To reach an open window
groping on the ceiling,
to hover into the space
and to go on ascending
over television antennas,
with an increasing speed
toward an indistinct end,
a black cosmic sphincter
where any being or thing
unwitting is converging
in open but strict order.

You shall sink into there
during a pause of silence
as deep as void as that of
the absence of an epileptic,
who shows the white of eyes
while foaming at his mouth
and those around hold him
by his arms on the floor,
a moment before he wakes.

Then you could listen to
a remote echo of events,
like a background noise
of a defective recording,
or watch the world through
a glass shutter of the port,
while you standing outside
at last get aware that all
what happens there inside
was just planned before.

You might even wait for
the selected program end
out of childish curiosity
to see from your nook who
will run to push the button
which starts the next cycle,
if he is a devil or an angel,
whether a poet or a politician,
a Great Mother or a God Father.


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PSYCHE’S FAULT

Down there is a land of shades,
where a stingy sunlight rains
through a few narrow fissures
up in an immense rocky vault.
Yet in the middle of the cave
a meadow blooms with asphodels,
quilted with silver cypresses;
the water flows from a spring
(said to be a lymph of memory)
and a crystal castle stands up.
Within those transparent walls,
I met the mistress of the dead.
She had been a girl in the past,
raped once by the lord of death.

“I was awaiting you” she said,
speaking through a golden mask,
“All the same relate about you,
why and how dared to come here”.
“You well know, seldom gods occur
to fall in love with human beings.
The god Eros fell in love with me,
but I could not believe it”, so
I answered to that gentle lady,
“When his mother discovered us,
I had to pay for such my fault.
Aphrodite asked me to descend
to you and to beg some cream
for her beauty, only you own”.

Persephone was just laughing
for a while, then she went on:
“You are so nice that I realize
the old Charon had pity on you,
glad to ferry your living body
on his boat for no body shades.
Please tell me, Psyche, how did
you manage to overcome Cerberus,
hell’s dog which so many heroes
were not able to prevail over...”
“This was far easier” I replied,
“I heard the beast is gluttonous
of such buns made of malt flour,
milk and honey. I fed it with
three cakes, one per each head”.

The queen got so amused, I deem,
that gave me a magic small vase.
“Never open it” she recommended,
“This rare unguent is only for
us goddesses, what you are not”.
When I was back, close to full
light of the day, I could not
resist temptation. Not the fear
of Aphrodite’s anger, nor even
the thought of my beloved Eros
could repress the curiosity and
desire, peculiar to human souls.
I uncorked that vase (the shades
murmured, behind myself). Soon,
a poison exhaled from it. I fell
into a sleep, as fast as death.


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RAILWAY EURYDICE

A bedroom of Fifties,
with its large mirrors
catching Sunday light
which filters through
the half open shutters.
The time has stopped at
a level crossing and
regresses to childhood,
whiling the wait away
with the car motor out.

Let the trains whistle
a long time in the rain;
let steel rails quiver
just like a tuning fork,
if tested with a hammer
when an electric lantern
swings over there along
the wet railway at night.

The rain does not stop
ticking on the sheet,
when a careless gesture
starts wipers working
with a heart-beat alike
inside the quiet cab.
Yet you sitting close
look so foreign while
lighting a cigarette
and that small flame
is dancing in the dark,
clearing up all around
but only for a moment.

All this has an old taste.
Let it last a bit longer
before going to flow back
into a wider unconscious,
absorbed by the wall-clock
of a waiting room. A paper
is now spread in the hands
with its banner headlines,
when a lamp beam strikes
through the glass window
with a screech of brakes,
without a sound of crash.

As long as it is enough
in order that your image
coincides with another,
just like a photo picture
which waves indistinct
while is emerging from
the acid in a dish tray
and it gets clear when
floating at the surface.
Then I know her Eurydice,
who returns to the life
indeed only for a moment.

Passengers are all alike
at dead of night, smelling
of coffee and cigarettes,
sunk in their high collars,
anonymous under the hats.
Yet you are not. You look
quite different with your
grey and transalpine eyes
brightened by a lighter,
beyond your window pane
sprinkled with raindrops,
while departing unknown
on a far going carriage.


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SPHINX’S RIDDLE

The town with no horizon
is made of high buildings.
It has as low barycentre
a man who walks down and
kicks an empty can of beer,
keeping in mind the green
of an old suburban garden,
girt with red brick walls.

There it crops up a white
of maimed marble statues,
between an ivy and a moss.
If you listen to it, there
may be heard the sing-song
of a fountain or a familiar
creaking of steps on gravel.

Half beast and half woman
a bronze Sphinx is smiling
and still rises long wings,
lying on the base of stone
with her bare female breast.
Yet she does riddle no more,
what has learnt once for all
when was beaten by Oedipus,
sharp sight and blind mind.

She stretches out two paws
holding a transparent globe,
turning it by her claws till
the dazzling light at sunset
runs through the tree leaves
and pierces it to the centre,
drawing out a moaning hiss.

Meanwhile some small hand
raises concentric circles
and a flight of red fishes
flinging pebbles into water,
or splits up the reflection
of the sky framed with palms
and crossed with a bird fly.
Up or down, narrow or wide,
how can it be said for sure?

But a little girl on a swing
goes up and down through air.
Never wishing to rest or stop
she gets near and flies back,
while enjoying her own shadow
if only meeting it with a tip
of her feet pointed to ground.


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SUBURBAN LABYRINTH

Once beyond the gate,
to cross a large yard
(so broad as to widen
about all over the globe)
while feeling its steps
and its sultry breath
behind our backs, while
trying to reach the centre.
But the centre is fruit
of a morbid imagination,
of distances traced out
by a patient clever hand
from each thing to other
in the architectural space.

Then an old myth rises
through the network: that
is a Minotaur bellowing,
while he tears the womb
of his mother Pasiphae,
mad with a beastly love,
in order to be born again
(such a shame had to be
covered with the winding
artifice of the Labyrinth).
Or it is a girlish Europa
abducted by a divine bull,
or else a cruel young hero
who stabs the bull shedding
its marble blood on the dust
and on the dung of archaic
slaughters and bullfights.

Outside the walled fence
Testaccio hill is looming
by the severe steel tower
of a gasometer, the Tiber
may be perceived flowing
with its slow slimy stream,
and the suburbs get flooded
by some sweet from country.
Now the wait drops its ash,
just like the only cigarette
of an empty packet at last.
Blowing onto an open stage,
a sudden summer wind drags
lights, images and music,
into a long drift at night.

Yet your face is reflected
in so many lit up screens,
an extreme fixed picture
making a feint of motion
on a surface with no depth,
ye Mistress of the Maze.
No real meaning gets out
of your lips, but a vague
murmur and a dull voice,
joined with a forced smile.
So much as to fall asleep
on a chair and to wake up
in a dark and dumb desert,
run across with shadows
cast by a faint moonlight.


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THE GOLDEN FLEECE

You may not imagine our wonder
when we saw the ship ploughing
these waves close to the unknown.
Its name was Argo and the talking
wood figure on its bow was a trick
importing only ruin to our country
(what had to get clear too late).
“Barbarians”, such they named us
those fifty sailors coming from
some “civilized” overseas land.

I was seduced by their captain,
by his disarming smile, while
standing on that fooling prow.
He looked like to see me alone
on the bank, a good family maid
sent to welcome him at the head
of a group of cautious old men.
Just for me he bad Orpheus play
a music that tames wild beasts.
He pleased to have as an ally
the daughter of the sovereign
in the realm of Golden Fleece,
which was the aim of his deed.

For love to Jason, I betrayed
my people. Thanks to my help,
he did steal the holy fleece
hidden in its enchanted wood.
Wasted my land, whose rivers
glitter with gold, he took me
with him like a double trophy.
Yet I felt glad to follow him,
though his bold mates already
treated me as a mere stranger.
I did not care about, if was
familiar with my blond hero.

There was a time of serenity
in the Greek port of Corinth,
where we came to live at last.
The only gain from the fleece,
an old and golden coat of ram,
had been some glory for Jason.
Indeed we brought up two sons
as splendid as the sunlight,
and I pretended not to hear
when the people said of me:
“She is Medea the sorceress,
is the nephew of that Circe
who changes males into pigs!”

So frightened by storms as to
loathe even the rowing boats,
I got used to watch the sails
coming and going on the blue,
from the terrace of our house.
And was so unaware of future,
that I hoped such lucky wind
was going to blow all a life.
Then, eaten up with ambition,
my husband fell in love with
Creusa, daughter of the king
of the town. In order to gain
the favour of her father, he
announced their near wedding.

I put a bold face to the news
(what could I do else, there?
I felt “a stranger” for ever),
but when he requested our sons
I refused. A misfortune wanted
Creusa, or the sky-eyed Glauce,
to die from a strange disease.
May he suffer an eternal pain,
somebody spread such a slander:
the cause was a bewitched gift.
I was charged with this crime;
so a rabble armed with torches
ran up to my door at nightfall.

Where were you then, my hero?
Watching the scene over there
delayed to succour your sons,
while expecting my surrender.
I cannot know what a fury got
master of me, all of a sudden.
Soon I went up to the terrace,
dragging our kids blindfolded
through the smoke and the fire.
As afraid they were taken away
I dared kill them without pity,
so much could an upset mother.
I remember the mob down yonder
struck dumb and to step back,
as though they saw themselves
reflected in my insane acting.

I was on board of a boat, when
began to recover consciousness
and a wound burnt in my breast
(I had failed, in my last stab).
My devoted old nurse was rowing
toward a Phoenician ship, ready
to sail through a moonless night.
The Golden Fleece got the price,
for whom heedless of its spell.
In vain I did call my children,
who stared at me from the heaven
by their starry and stunned eyes;
from nowhere could sound a reply.


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THESPIS’ CHARIOT

Anyone will not believe me.
An evening of a sad spring
I have seen my sister again,
the brave Oedipus’ daughter,
when she was no more alive.
Indeed she was and was not,
she was not really herself
but a character on a stage.
And this was carried around
by Thespis on his chariot,
through our land of Greece
(you know what I mean, most
people call it theatre now).

She was and was not at once,
only an actor under his mask
just reciting her own words.
Yet when I saw her going to
die again, because revolted
against the tyrant of Thebes,
then all my tears streamed
from my eyes down my cheeks.
And I felt remorse for what
I had not done at her side,
for all I was unable to do
during this empty lifetime,
since I lone have survived.

Urged by my sorrow, I asked
Thespis: “How could you dare
give such a new life to them,
who had already their trouble
in the world?” And the author
said, scanning deep my soul:
“Dear Ismene, do not blame me.
My god is Dionysus; my goddess
Mnemosyne, mistress of memory
and mother of the holy Muses.
Truly do you wish your sister
shall be forgotten, after us?
Anything she did would be vain;
my art will replay it for ever,
any despot worrying for that”.

I got so impressed by him
with those few words, that
began to follow his chariot
since then, wherever he goes
to stage a play of our lives.
It be a tragedy or a comedy,
I do not care about too much;
even more it matters we go on
weeping or smiling on the show.
Not seldom at night Antigone’s
gentle shade too comes roaming
by my side for a while, till I
fall asleep rocked by the roll
and dream of our blind father,
raised by a god to the stars.


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ULYSSES’ VOICES

Too many asked me what
did the fair Sirens sing
when I filled with wax
all the ears of my crew,
while bowed on the oars,
so that they could not
hear the song. Yet I bad
to tie myself at the mast
of the inert sail, for
I might escape the trap
of those tempting voices
uttered by maiden breasts,
listening to their appeal.

Indeed, they promised me
to tell nothing but what
I already knew: all about
the war with its mourning
of winners and vanquished,
or on the unlucky returns
of Greek heroes from Troy;
such a song, as to wonder
if their voices could be
just the same which echo
inside my sleep and make
me wake during the night,
longing for the daylight.

In their wild cursed isle,
the monsters were roosted
on the top of white rocks.
They are said to be gloomy
spirits of the storm, birds
with head and bust of woman.
Yet there was no wind around.
As we came near to the coast,
could see those rocks were
heaps of bones, as many as
the deaths begot by the war
between Trojans and Greeks!

Our ship went back offshore,
driven away by the efforts
of rowers against the stream.
Yet those voices haunted me,
I became a prey to remorse
and writhed while begging
for the knots to be undone,
and would jump into the sea
if only someone obeyed me.
But nobody could hear and
my mates avoided noticing
my gestures, since minding
orders I gave them before.

So many liked to suppose
some raving pleasure arose
from that bewitched melody,
rather than a suicidal rush.
As mastering myself again,
I did not disappoint them
and kept up their illusion.
I feared they did not wish
to get aware or might turn
on their leader in such deed.
They could not know, no one
of them was going to outlive
the halting revenge of gods.


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Translation is a bother. Take your poems – do they not lose much by that process? If you had a method of making them intelligible to all people at the same time, it would be really wonderful.

Herbert G. Wells, in conversation with Rabindranath Tagore

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