Four Poems

CRICKETS

The grinding sound of a secret
at our window,
a secret too quiet to be inquired;
we face the rhythm of its countenance
in the weightless dark,
it stands and hovers at the same time
and we look for cheekbones on the pomegranate flowers
and let the sun-drenched stones rest;
we have let ourselves get lost
somewhere over there
in the looming breath of leaves and stalks,
there’s an absence we cherish
with the dissolved consistency of our day,
we know now we can only listen at last
and ask nothing
and fly,
because we need to fly
to reach the vibrant
unbounded stillness of sleep.

BASHO

Neat gaze, naked like
the very heart of his being
when he decided to set off
leaving all he had behind.
A start from scratch, hard
and just painful at first.
But what you know you also need
at the bottom of yourself.
You sense his eyes now
watching this lush June grass field,
stalks waving from the train window,
a stretch of green you know well
but with a newness in the sunlight,
a breath you couldn’t expect,

a luminous gust
scraping your silence,
exposing the veins
of the farthest and closest heart.

HOME

The pigeon taps the cat’s bowl
with a rhythm that comes close, very close,
from the balcony to your table,
it makes you nod at once and acknowledge
the seconds’ clearness in the silence.
It’s only here after all
that you can really taste
the roots of the floor
adhering barefoot to its soul,
even if you felt the same
walking on that Paestum street,
arcs and bricks
so suddenly at one with your gaze and skin,
squared blocks so worn and warm
on the soles of your feet,
the expanded breath of a cradle
like the tap on a bowl lulling you to sleep.
And you want to believe all will continue,
dust on your speckled floor welcoming the air
shifted for ages by your barefoot steps,
dust listening to the nearness of a tapping beak
among walls now with maybe no roof,
the sunlight of a hot noon hushing
some passing stranger’s talk, steps
shuffling in the slow fluttering of banana leaves.

SKERRIES

Wind. On the beach our sweaters blown into,
we were tasting the swollen dizziness of clouds
inebriated by tingling wind chimes,
the boats’ masts gossiping in the gusts.
We walked for ages in a day
of soft strand and scattered sunlit surf pools,
the air flashing on, what stays with us
is that streaming openness of the sky’s throat
and the familiar seaside’s aftermath:
the tide coming in while we were leaving,
the palm of a hand spreading vast
with a luminous quietness and we
going back to the city in its wake,
everything dangling on the bus,
sky and strand with their huge
dregs of drunkenness in our mind’s eye
gaily bruised and hushed by the beach’s
stretched breath.