Cotici il 16 agosto 1916
Mi tengo a quest’albero mutilato
abbandonati in questa dolina
chehaillangjuore
di un circo
prima o dopo lo spettacolo
e guardo
il passaggio aquieto
delle nuvole sulla luna
Stamani mi sono disteso
in un’urna d’acqua
e come una reliquia
ho riposato
L’Isonzo scorrendo
mi levigava
come un suo sasso
Ho tirato su
le mie quattr’ossa
e me ne sono andato
come un acrobata
sull’acqua
Mi sono accoccolato
vicino ai meie panni
sudici di Guerra
e come un beduino
mi sono chinato a ricevere
il sole
Questo e l’Isonzo
e qui meglio
mi sono riconosciuto
una docile fibra
dell’universo
Ilmio supplizio
e quando
non mi credo
in armonia
Ma quelle occulte
mani
che m’intridono
mi regalano
la rara
felicita
Ho ripassato
la epoche
della mia vita
Aquesti sono
i mei fumi
Questo e il Serchio
al qualte hanno attinto
duemil’anniforse
di gente mia campagnola
e mio padre e mia madre
Questo e il Nilo
che mi ha visto
nascere e crescere
e ardere d’inconsapevolezza
nelle estese pianure
Questa e la Senna
e in quel suo torbido
mi sono rimescolato
e mi sono conosciuto
Questi sono i miei fiumi
contati nell’Isonzo
Questa e la mia notalgia
che in ognuno
mi traspare
ora ch’e notte
ch la mia vita mi pare
una corolla
di tenebre
RIVERS, TRANSLATION BY WALLY SWIST
Cotici il 16 agosto 1916
This mutilated tree
lends me support leaning in a pothole
it evokes the torpor
of a circus
either before or after the spectacle
I watch
the quiet passage
of clouds cross the moon
This morning I stretched myself
in an urn of water
and like a relic
I rested
The Isonzo scoured
me as smooth as a stone
I pulled up my four limbs
and I went
like an acrobat
over the water
I crouched by my clothes
spattered by war
I tilted my head
like a Bedouin
to take in the sun
This is the Isonzo
and it is here that I
most see myself
as a pliant thread
amid the cosmos
My torture
is when
I do not believe
myself to be in harmony
But those
hidden hands
guide me as they knead me
with rare joy
I have relived
the stages of my life
These are
my rivers
This is the Serchio
from which perhaps has drawn
for two thousand years
the people of my country
and my father and my mother
This is the Nile
that has witnessed my birth
and I grew
and burned in ignorance
over expansive plains
This is the Seine
and in its turbidity
I became mixed up
and different parts of me
came to know each other
These are my rivers
finding confluence in the Isonzo
This is my nostalgia
that in each river
one lives through me
now that it is night
and that my life seems
to bud like a corolla
of shade
Wally Swist’s books include Huang Po and the Dimensions of Love (Southern Illinois University Press, 2012), A Bird Who Seems to Know Me: Poetry Regarding Birds and Nature (Ex Ophidia Press, 2019), Awakening and Visitation (2020), Evanescence: Selected Poems (2020), and Taking Residence (2021), all with Shanti Arts.
