HYPOTHESES ON LOVE
Translated by Jonathan Galassi
The Grenfell Press, New York 1989
1. TO CHERUBINO
Maybe natural analogies
dance for joy
maybe once the boredom of deceit
has dimmed
they go:
hypoteses of love.
Maybe all it took
was a blade
to cut through thoughts
futilities, and give us
in one fusing meeting
closeness
fire
desire.
The fortunes of war
are unsure.
But I shall win: for Venus
grants me realms
that Mars bestows on others.
2. TO CHERUBINO
1.
Beloved lover loving you
I have tears in my eyes
and salt on my tongue
there's no distance between us
we are
heat fallen into life forgetting
and when I look
I see you're sun
color that changes and wants to be lost
in the furrow that forks out of yearning.
2.
After the last flowers are flung
we find this field
of sowings whithe.
There are times for tears and times
when the song of days
transforms the frozen past.
And then go down the mossy paths
together in the shrouds of haze
capable of reaping the return
of a lost day.
3. TO CHERUBINO
With a baby's mouth
Cherubino
you chained my links
with your divine pupil
at the windows of the lustral waters,
along the grassy paths
already travelled in games
you lace up my desire.
Time intrigues
yearning quivers in silence,
and I pull the thread
that holds me bound
my Amintas
who fills the nights
with delicate glittering notes.
4. TO CHERUBINO
It began as a game
then little by little
suddently the claim
of your eyes that turn me
pale.
The link between us is clear
the web was already taut
charms of winds were whispering.
Iask the winged one
not to end the game
I know the signs of the ancient flame:
it's sweet to set wisdom aside
in the right time and place.
5. TO CHERUBINO
And when you
take the way again
hilt, shaft and reign
of flowering,
there's no arrogance
in your burning:
eagle that comes back to the rock
drop of a thousand spirals
you climb the paths of paling again
like a land of exile
that received you as a warrior
and rediscovers you a son.
6. TO CHERUBINO
Luminous and alone
enchantment of a day
remedy for tedium,
to become together
is the sorcery
of a sun that rerises
shining in the morning.
7. TO CHERUBINO
The objective
is the promise
land of meanings
in the hour of the forbidden.
While images
rush to portray
and reinforce
the rem acu tetigisti.
8. TO CHERUBINO
The long night of forgetting
has left scars
the waking bitter hours.
This undefended thought
has the feel of fever
makes it sense the world
as a threat.
Can you make joy flower again
with your grace that has no bounds?
Nods of giving, of wanting
subdued by the links
that are the sources of life:
mantles, lights, unions
wood of hovered abandons.
9. TO CHERUBINO
Tell me do you too feel
time flowing on.
The day of enchantment seems
long gone.
I take steps
toward subtle meeting-places
stretched lines of arcs
toward furtive waters
where, Arcadians, we go together.
10. TO CHERUBINO
The entrancing cuckoo
coos
while the hour
of sunset draws near.
And from far off
voice that arrives
at the mouth of imagining
you set down step after step
the short and the long time
of going.
Dream,
living fragments
with glistening teeth
furtive deities
of restraint.
11. TO CHERUBINO
You too will age
and die of the sickness of ending.
There's time enough to sing
one recovered morning.
12. TO CHERUBINO
You're here
and your hand arouses themes
dancing on divine slopes.
You tremble, and the walls
feel your fervor.
Threadbare, alyssum, vain
phoenix, ut vale,
you hold both now and never
on your back the horseman
rides and devours.
13. TO MY GRANDFATHER FRANCESCO
The unknown moment,
to rediscover time together,
draws near
I count hours and parts of hours
live in your absent eyes
the arbitrary event of abandonment.
14. TO MY FATHER TITTA
The fleeting game of days runs on,
and I see you alone again.
Even the sun dies.
Of my loving you
a light in the dark remains,
god of my childhood
insanity of knowing.
Step after step
you wanted to advance
into the abyss of nothingness,
a solitary calling
for those who don't survive in memory.
Without you I lose distant lands,
wath lasts is the rustle
of a horsechestnut
a trace remains intact
a storm, an ipse solus,
a thrush, a Margit, an Alice
and what Nietzsche says
and Treccani,
loved hands on the card table.
Place, tetragon, upsa
and slang and Greek and the false <phallus>.
Titta, the end raised above you
has no aim.
You ended in me
osmosis of stock and mind
a crazy, sincere tribe, a true
inheritance of despair.
.
15. TO MY BROTHER FRANCESCO
Where is that hidden
secret place
to hide what's
given, what's said
and rise again
in a rustle of love
that won't go bad in the mouth.
16. TO HIM
Convince me of your love
come to me to loosen
this knot of anguish.
Only you can.
You dense with gulls' wings.
Look
we are high on the branch
in the morning sun.
And we're leaving pearls on the road,
sweet drops
of illusion.
17. TO S.
An endless S
of Suspensions, Scents
far-off Sounds, sowed
that emblem of my silent thought of you
the sea.
It stayed,
a troubled, endless drawing
of our meeting.
18. TO VINCENZO AGNETTI
Topaz of the rediscovered day
you leave the light
gem, dilemma of the usual
and live defeat
renouncing returning.
19. TO MARISA BULGHERONI
And we shall die
consuming the final
frenzy
in the effusion of living
in the idea of the beautiful
with our desires intact
and the time for them.
20. TO VICO FAGGI
With the void around us
in an ant's nest of lies
we are
this now of joy.
21. TO LUIGI FENGA
We compared
our solitudes
looked for answers
hanging from threads
that tremble between us.
And now we stare at each ohter
without time or space.
22. TO FRANCO FORTINI
Neither god nor animal
you sense the excitement of flight
and the void of the fall.
You live in deep water
the dying
presence of time.
23. TO JORGE GUILLÉN
Withered shore.
Alone, I find that rising again
that I abandoned out of fear.
While the omen trembles
and the nadir of the rediscovered
empyrean offers
dreams to pursue.
24. TO JAMES LAUGHLIN
Luminous ideals
you are the face of sounds
the region
of living listening.
25. TO CLAUDIO MAGRIS
For you, nostalgia for the truth
we'll die only a moment.
And come back without the torment
of knowing,
to create and uncreate
a little absolute.
26. TO ALLEN MANDELBAUM
I belived in words
sown like flowers.
Time space action
are frayed languages
unmeasurable measures
phantoms of purification.
27. TO EUGENIO MONTALE
Bright sea profile
voice that brings amazement
and untangles ideas
stay in the world
that confuses
present and past
droplets of time and sounds,
frozen crystal
where seeing oneself
is another day.
28. TO MARIANNE MOORE
Endless way of knowing.
In a single moment
the impossible becomes
and desire and detachment
are our fate.
29. TO PIER PAOLO PASOLINI
The vultures
feed on us
the way the sun
can fall victim
to witchcraft.
Day you are illusion
night
cave of shadows
where gulls
and forgotten
incense
take flight.
30. TO EZRA POUND
To be, but
not constantly
to tear from life
the nothing
that is
endless change.
31. TO GABRIELLA RONCHI
Hand of a surveillant wing
fate bestows
and nothing surprises anymore
sets
new logics, moves
proofs of osmosis
covens of far-off silence
already filled with shouts,
abandonment of the day
in the shadow of the gone.
And the wind that grazes
has dawns that bring
other dawns.
32. TO VANNI SCHEIWILLER
It will retutn
the time for going
into the raving present.
Absent from living
I spy on the sea
mirror of tomorrows.
33. TO CESARE SEGRE
Joy is the praise
of the praised friend
who governs thought
of language.
I find more truth
in a torrent of words
than in the uncertain garland of tomorrow
or surrender to the wise.
The word
urges our continuing together
beacuse it is our passion
and our country.
34. TO GIUSEPPE UNGARETTI
To rise into the empyrean
of nec soli impar.
Thus the navigator
spoke to the winds
and the wind to poetry
with the goddess near
and the hearing of our rhymes
devoted to not ending.
35. TO LUCHINO VISCONTI
The wound is already earth
blooming with lilac
the surroundings don't deny
the hour or the day
they savor their slow failing.
Dying is here today
yesterday was love
tomorrow notes of enchantment
will chase the tears away.
36. TO ANDREA ZANZOTTO
Health
to him who makes new dances
almost everything's appeased
the taste for reinventing stays
now the last light of the usual
ist out
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