THE ZATTERE ( from A VENICE OF MY OWN)

 

A narrow bank along the lagoon.

With a name resounding in a plural,

“the rafts”, since I was a child though

I have never imagined rafts here

but air swarming on a sunny side,

“let’s go to the Zattere for an ice-cream”,

it has always sounded as a space

with a scent of Sundays, where you could stroll

licking your cone, chattering, by the water.

Lapping water. It has always been

as if people and the motley everything

were “here” just in order to leisurely

gaze “over there”, at the other bank,

at that row of houses on the horizon

mirroring these houses, on a tidy line.

And beyond, poles and scattered spots

of green, other islands, the faintly trimmed

lagoon’s eyelashes, their flourishing flashes.

This bank, a whole gazing,

clearing its voice, passing the time,

drumming its fingers, indulging on some rhyme.

And the rafts? Well, let me say that

on this bank, on this verge, on this side,

there’s an urgency each step might hide,

the necessity of being ready, by this lapping

biding its time at your side.

Here, where you can easily get on board, on a raft,

where I can see you then crossing and waving, while fading.

Look at the waves, crests tossed all over

by the whooshing motorboats, tips

like fingers in a dance of their own.

Sit on this bench, the wall behind you

is yellow, imbued with sunlight, the air

is mellow even if it’s cold.

Sit and sense the stare of the passing time

in which all words can drown without a cry.

 

You lived here, by the narrowest stretch,

the water a few metres from your room,

in this palace with its glass door in the lull

of the lagoon, with the front wall shaped

like a ship’s prow. Ready to sail the seas.

The bank is also at its lowest level here,

the tide easily laps in, water an unframed arm

that can swiftly swallow you.

I remember your fingers grabbing the slippery

white stones of the bank hauling yourself up

from the boat; it was a summer day when

we had ventured to other side, it had been

a slow rowing, the boatman like a sentinel

standing quietly behind.

Walls and stones for me transpire you here,

by “the prow” of time looking at the unknown,

I am not sure how much you feared to disappear,

now you are air, salt, and whatever these words

hardly catch or rather don’t catch at all.

Words that against all odds,

 in a whirlwind of their own

or in a buffeting breeze, don’t cease.

On this edge, this margin, so narrow,

stung by the raw lace of the shrieking gulls.

Kate Atkinson

I have read almost all her novels, the right adjective for this latest one is sparkling. Each sentence, each word sparkles, falls instantly perfectly into place. The title: Life After Life.
Has a narration, each word of it, a taste? Beyond metaphor, it has.

LICKING

I could highlight

ice-cream in late afternoon

sliding into a luminous

evening on the waterfront.

On Sundays. Eyeing people

strolling, chatter unrolling,

all that streaming over there.

Longing for staying

in the trust of a stare.

In the ever present

days gone by, the sun shining,

unreached and unreserved.

Licking, from mouth to mind,

settling each lick in the heart.

Sensing we could lick

all the way to the bone,

like through a flowers’ persistence

from stone to stone.

 

Like my licking master,

my dog under the table

now licking my bare feet

making me feel fully

earth to earth on my seat,

on the waves of this stage, still

and faring forward in spring heat.

BERIBBONED

 

Words come, like this

and you simply enjoy their taste even if

you are not really sure of what they mean.

And do not find them in the dictionary.

Beloved ghosts, beloved ribbons.

They give you an image, almost

for the hell of it, almost

shrugging they shoulders,

through the enduring

babbling bubbles of syllables.

Then the image can just

fly away, they don’t mind.

In the wind, in the wind-

they laugh and sigh.

Words you have repeated

for ages and in between stages,

first as a child, when they settled

in the interstices of days and skies,

and seasons. They still ring,

become at one with the texture

of your own smile in things.

Mantras in life’s stanzas,

with no consistence

and no consequence,

shiny maybe just for this.

They have always made you

feel both foolish and divine,

brandishing the illusion,

the beribboned flashing of life.

 

 

WIND ON THE BEACH

You can shout and be shovelled away

in this swarming.

You sense you can shout whatever you like

in these snakes and ladders shot through the sky.

You see sand in a cloud while you are walking

the sunlit pavement rising towards the seafront,

the stage full of a bright rage launching

lace after lace into the open.

The swarming stare of the air where tracks fall apart

like the infinitely torn ventricles of a heart.

Smithereens of a god’s cheekbones who enjoys

being endlessly blown up in rumbling ribbons.

It’s an unframed huge breath on your face

that makes you sooner or later lower your gaze

and you think of all that’s lost at once and swarms

and there must be, must be something of yours here,

in this lashing of selves, forgotten, torn, or just being born,

in this rushing and crashing of nothing into nothing,

this throaty, hollering announcement of air into air,

or stares expanding and exploding into stares, lizards

stopped by in an aplomb of sky, gazing motionless

for a second - time stopping, time never ending-

and in the next just dashing, flashing away.

A tail scuttering or, so much for that,

a tale plunging beyond the edge of an odyssey,

or a heart in the wake of a perpetual lightning,

or hope in eternity of sun breathing through sail.

TOSSED UP

The stench is unmistakable,

a  shape on the black strand

half-buried in wet sand,

my dog  runs and rubs her back on it

paws in bliss cycling the sky,

I run too and shout “Away”

and she goes, reluctantly.

 

The ancestral need in an instant

of covering one’s smell

with a rotten other, wanting on instinct

to merge in the rot, the living with the dead.

The basic wish of plunging into what  

is gone and gnawed by the currents,

getting the scent, the tang

and the whisper of the whirlpool.

 

A spring sun shone on the beach

this morning, with a haze

like a choir slightly ablaze.

The sea roar stared from its maze.

Clouds cruising, glorious day

for a first swim.

The carcass was there, behind me.

I didn’t look at what it looked like.

MOBILE

On the train, early in the morning,

you sit on your seat,

very alone.

It’s so clear on such an hour

your being alone,

on the day’s bare bone.

So you start fumbling

with your small glass

portable home..

touch, touch, touch,

slide and touch,

so much.

This screen, the moral

at your disposal.

This smooth log,

this starlit

bog.

 

Slide, slide on

this shiny pool, dear,

no matter how far off you are,

no matter how astray,

slide and touch, it’s clear

you are not dead yet, or so you say.