1<\/p>\n
How unlike May, this polluted pall of air dazzling shards of light mark hiding the blue hills of Lazio, hanging beside casts a deathly, peaceful aura of decay rubble the spectre of an ingenuous fight You, young hero, lived when delusion like our robust fathers\u2019 feckless views. ideals which throw light on this impasse, fated boneyard. Once again you are in dreaded The sole presence beyond theirs is composed with Vespers floating over heaps of tin the words of a ribald song, as the clouds part.<\/p>\n 2<\/p>\n In this clash between two worlds: no respite. stubborn and hypocritical pretense Graven on these tombs are legends giving Billionaires from every imperial state, Princes and pederasts of known voracity for malevolence which unabashedly burns of men who remain human, likewise to confine hush to churches or to slums to weeds and nettles, also breeds the slender box which dusk lightens with the complex a hint of mint or rotten hay, which curbs the evening. The weather may be rude Its clammy fragrance founds under the English sky, meadows which are \u201cAnd O ye fountains<\/i>\u201d \u2014 a rhapsodic praise 3<\/p>\n A red bandana like those insurgents tie where symbolic geraniums have been laid …. you are reduced to Gramsci\u2019s Ashes<\/i>, despised. at the presence of your spirit in your dust or even simpler, an enraptured adolescent you rest, it feels wrong among these effects that more pages would have been left to write witness to the primeval powers plied pomp to scandalous shame. Those without excess the end of the world in which work was rooted. for bargains which now show the patina added caught between spheres who struggles with the mere love of it, not with the callow, violent I detested, since in it was fused by and reject power\u2019s ubiquitous laws, Because I lack your rigour, I have not I hate, caught in a despicable plight 4<\/p>\n My shameful contradiction is clear-cut. Traitor in my thoughts to my father\u2019s pretense of instinct and of esthetic passion. not its struggle or the millennial dawn undertakings, which is lost in mass More than that I cannot say, since I know Like the poor, the hope in which I persevere survival. Yet in my state of dispossession, of bourgeois mastery, the most blessed from this perception?<\/p>\n 5<\/p>\n I don\u2019t mean the individual me, composed by provocative names which parse The private and public acts to which I\u2019m prey of true believers, who, beholden since birth My own remains are destined for burial as any Jesuit\u2019s, while within I juggle is also mixed the pretentious chronic minutiae in my depths where clash and bond So the ego lives, conscientiously feeling within I cannot deny near you here in Rome, herself hushed, among reads Shelley. <\/i>Now <\/i>I understand the release engulfed him in blind, acqueous perdition, Prostrate Italy, as if in the belly bestrewn in Lazio with thickets teeming a Goethean dream, his member swollen conduits of dark arrowhead are stained smells of his youth, heedless of them. The shoreline over stucco \u2014 a landscape for humankind by the torrid Apuan Alps, pink spangles of soft, steep fragrance down to the waterside, \u2026 Everywhere hums with percussive ease doesn\u2019t deign to tremble, instead projects their swarthy faces wet with sweat, rise or on beaches with fouled sand \u2026<\/p>\n Would you ask me, here where you are walled, 6<\/p>\n I\u2019m going now. I leave you to the evening with shadows in the neighborhood, completely lust for life reignites in the raucous sound You feel in these alien\u00a0human allies, tenements where the sinister drive a mortal, communal moment they are doomed the point of life itself. They show the same the daily grind of work, corruption to speak of ideals in this historically real almost Alexandrian thrill this world implodes, returns Across bare Testaccio assorted from shards, over public squares, Then this dazzling diadem shatters. One last Increasingly rare buses host amble up the slopes past scores waiting among the aphrodisiac trash. between more sturdy buildings urchins frail insolence, bumptious adolescents fill of themselves. Once darkness signals Then in Piazza Testaccio the sycamores of the Slaughterhouse, steeped in gore Life is movement and commotion. There they are, defenceless people, miserable life takes place in history, how can I pretend <\/p>\n After Pier Paolo Pasolini, Le Ceneri di Gramsci<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n 1 con cieche schiarite \u2026 questo cielo<\/em> alle curve del Tevere, ai turchini<\/em> tra le vecchie muraglie l\u2019autunnale<\/em> tra le macerie finito il profondo<\/em> Tu giovane, in quel maggio in cui l\u2019errore<\/em> Tu Gramsci, meno sventato e pi\u00f9 sano<\/em> delineavi l\u2019ideale che illumina<\/em> giardino) questo silenzio. Non puoi,<\/em> patrizia ti \u00e8 intorno. E, sbiadito,<\/em> nel vespro: tra misere tettoie, nudi<\/em> la sua giornata, mentre intorno spiove.<\/em><\/p>\n 2<\/em><\/p>\n Tra i due mondi, la tregua, i cui non siamo.<\/em> e nobile, in cui caparbio l\u2019inganno<\/em> che mostrare la superstite sorte<\/em> e impotenti. Ancora di passioni<\/em> pi\u00f9 grandi; ronzano, quasi mai scomparse,<\/em> inceneriti e non ancora casti.<\/em> uomini, di un tedio che nel tedio<\/em> a tuguri e a chiese, empia nella piet\u00e0,<\/em> questi magri cipressi, questa nera<\/em> rasserenando spegne in disadorni<\/em> l\u2019atmosfera, con un brivido di menta,<\/em> trepidazione della notte. Rude<\/em> altro suolo; questo umido che<\/em> orizzonti dove inglesi selve coronano<\/em> smeraldi: <<And I ye Fountains\u2026>> – le pie<\/em><\/p>\n invocazioni\u2026.<\/em><\/p>\n 3<\/em><\/p>\n Uno straccetto rosso, come quello<\/em> diversamente rossi, due gerani.<\/em> morti: Le ceneri di Gramsci\u2026Tra speranza<\/em> alla tua tomba, al tuo spirito restato<\/em> e anche di pi\u00f9 umile, ebbra simbiosi<\/em> la tua tensione, sento quale torto<\/em> nostra \u2013 tu avessi stilando le supreme<\/em>
\nmade even murkier in the murk
\n<\/span>of a foreign cemetery plot where<\/p>\n
\noff the slobbering sky from calcified
\nyellow fa\u00e7ades set in an immense arc<\/p>\n
\n<\/span>the curves of the Tiber. This elegiac May,
\nlike us displaced, malcontent, dissatisfied,<\/p>\n
\nover crumbling ramparts. In this twilight
\nappears through the gloom of grey
\n<\/span><\/p>\n
\nto make human life over, lost decades
\nof frustration, silence, rotting blight \u2026.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n
\nwas rife, an Italian May, one which imbues
\nlife with passions, be they grave illusion,<\/p>\n
\nWith a hand already emaciated,
\n<\/span>not as father but a brother, you laid out new<\/p>\n
\nfor you in death as for ourselves, as dead
\n<\/span>now as you in this dank antiquated
\n<\/span><\/p>\n
\ndetention, not with virile inmates enclosed
\nbut with aristocrats, in whom ennui is inbred.<\/p>\n
\nof faint clinks on anvils which drift in
\nfrom the forges of Testaccio, juxtaposed<\/p>\n
\njunk, delapidated hovels fallen apart,
\nbeside which an urchin finds within<\/p>\n
\nWe must choose, commit, but there is no end sense
\nbeyond this wretched plot where the trite, \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
\nprevails that life goes on after living.
\n<\/span>Among the epitaphs there is no suspense.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n
\nbare accounts of the short and brutal fate
\n<\/span>dealt out by common lot, which is unforgiving.<\/p>\n
\nwhose flesh reeks of greed and rapacity,
\nleave but whiffs of scandal, petty or great.<\/p>\n
\nlet just rumors escape from their gilded urns
\nof the unexpunged capacity \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
\nin their bones. So silence here testifies
\nto the courteous concerns<\/p>\n
\n<\/span>that this dull tedium fully becomes
\n<\/span>this dreary place. The indifferent city tries\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n
\n\u2014 impious piety which costs it splendor.
\nBut the soil within this plot, which succumbs<\/p>\n
\ncypress, and dark humidity bedecks
\nthe walls with random shoots of tender\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
\nsavour of moss \u2026. ragged inodorous herbs
\nonto which the purple sky projects<\/p>\n
\nthe melancholy of day and is prelude
\nto a trepidation which disturbs \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
\nbut the redolent soil within these grounds
\nrecalls others of a different latitude.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
\nmemories of distant horizons where
\nwoodlands crown lakes scattered out of bounds<\/p>\n
\n<\/span>as green as emeralds or billiard table baize
\nacross which resounds like a prayer:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
\nof invocation\u2026.<\/p>\n
\nrolled around their throats, plus a different shade
\nof scarlet on the waxen earth nearby<\/p>\n
\nLying among foreign dead, ostracized
\nby bleak Catholic logic to this morbid glade,<\/p>\n
\nTorn between incipient hope and an old distrust,
\nI’ve wended my way to this modest site, surprised<\/p>\n
\nhere among us living. (Or maybe is it
\nsomething else, more like lust,<\/p>\n
\n<\/span>symbiosis of death and sex?)
\nIn this forsaken country, which would not let<\/p>\n
\nof the speechless dead (but also somehow right,
\nsince upon us all falls the same fated hex)<\/p>\n
\nof your magnum opus on the day you died.
\nThe blue-bloods buried here bear outright<\/p>\n
\nby those who hold the right to own, who possess
\ncontrol that over sordid centuries has tied<\/p>\n
\nwealth bequeath the faintest echoes, like the muted
\nclinks on anvil ringing here which express<\/p>\n
\nAnd here I am, a poor man modestly clad
\n<\/span>in clothes paupers ogle in windows reputed<\/p>\n
\nby the filth of lonely streets, the smear
\nof streetcar benches \u2014 I, nomad<\/p>\n
\ndecision to live or not, a daily torment.
\nBut I want to embrace life out of sheer<\/p>\n
\nand voluptuous love of a confused
\nadolescent, a phase of malcontent<\/p>\n
\nbourgeois hatred of the bourgeois I was.
\nYet since the two of us have both been refused<\/p>\n
\nis it more than bitterness misused
\nto espouse this other righteous cause?<\/p>\n
\nmade real choices, rather perform the rite
\nof postwar decline, besotted with what<\/p>\n
\nof divided consciousness…<\/p>\n
\nAt the same time I am with you and against,
\nwith you in my heart, against you in my gut.<\/p>\n
\nof social rank, at best a sham of action,
\nI ape his bourgeois state in heated defence<\/p>\n
\nEven before I read you I was drawn
\nto the working class, its joys the attraction,<\/p>\n
\n<\/span>it promised, not its consciousness of class
\nbut the natural primal force of human<\/p>\n
\nmovements but casts a poetic glow
\n<\/span>of nostalgia on disasters come to pass.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
\nmy attachment is abstract, like insincere
\nwords of love when feeling doesn\u2019t flow.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
\ndemeans me; it becomes an obsession.
\nAs they do I struggle every day for sheer<\/p>\n
\nhowever bleak, I am the one possessed,
\nbewitched by the most exalting illusion<\/p>\n
\nand absolute: I own history. But it owns me,
\nenlightens me. What use are insights wrest<\/p>\n
\n<\/span>of given sensual and emotional parts \u2026
\nI have many vices, my fate disclosed<\/p>\n
\nmy original sin, blended with everyday
\ninborn foibles — iniquity of all sorts.<\/p>\n
\nincarnate my time on earth
\nand are not immune to the dismay<\/p>\n
\nto death, embrace religion to shunt away
\nlight, shedding light on light\u2019s own dearth.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
\nat Verano. Catholic too is my struggle,
\nas manical and adversarial<\/p>\n
\nboth Talmudic ruse and a histrionic
\nprogressive zeal. Into this muddle<\/p>\n
\ntastes of a dandy born back of beyond
\ninto ruddy rustic health. The demonic<\/p>\n
\nAuthority and Anarchy protect me
\nfrom inebriate sin, virtue foregone.<\/p>\n
\npreserving its own naivet\u00e9. So live I,
\neluding the gist of life, obsessively<\/p>\n
\nlife comes down to nasty, brutish oblivion.
\nAt last I grasp (wordless in the wet wind\u2019s sigh \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
\n<\/span>a stand of weary, disconcerted cypress)
\n<\/span>the soul of the man whose own inscription<\/p>\n
\n<\/span><\/i>of passions so Greek in a patrician
\npilgrim from the North whose caprice<\/p>\n
\nthe carnal and aesthetic glee
\nof his daredevil, juvenile mission.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
\nof a huge cicada, splays limbs of gleaming
\nsand out along that same sea,\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
\nwith baroque pine, glades of green-golden
\narugula. In one of them naps, dreaming \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
\n<\/span>beneath his rags, a local swain .\u2026
\n<\/span>And on the Maremma coast open<\/p>\n
\nbright by stands of hazel alongside bovine
\npaths a herdsman fills with the Augean<\/p>\n
\nat Versillia curves before perfumed blind
\n<\/span>tangles of the sea. Inlaid tile roofs shine<\/p>\n
\n<\/span>ressurrected which then disentangles,
\nexposing in somber Cinquale, confined<\/p>\n
\nagainst the vitreous blue of tumbled rock slides
\ncollapsed in panicked shambles<\/p>\n
\nwhere the sun wrestles with the breeze
\nto extract supreme sweetness from the tides.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
\nthe unbounded instruments of sex
\nand light. Italy, so used to these,\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
\na living image of its own demise.
\nYet in hundreds of ports youths on decks,<\/p>\n
\n<\/span>and shout out the names of friends on land
\nnear gardens of herbs and cardoons<\/p>\n
\nto abandon my desperate passion
\nfor being alive in this world?<\/p>\n
\nwhich, though gloomy, falls almost sweetly
\nfor us the living, its pallid light blending<\/p>\n
\nmixing with them, filling up the void around.
\n<\/span>Meanwhile, in the background, discreetly,<\/p>\n
\nof trams rumbling on their rails and human cries
\nin dialect \u2014 music muffled yet profound.<\/p>\n
\nas they shout out and laugh, that they are alive
\nin their cubicles, in their wretched highrise<\/p>\n
\nand gift of life is like a match consumed,
\ntheir existence but a shudder, a shiver,<\/p>\n
\nto pursue without higher aim
\n<\/span>beyond subsistence, presumed<\/p>\n
\nbehavior as a species whose obsession
\nremains, by whatever name, \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
\nhumbly lending to their humble zeal
\na touch of festivity. Useless digression,
\n<\/span><\/p>\n
\nemptiness, this roar which has fallen still.
\nBetter to admire the stupendous sun-seared<\/p>\n
\n<\/span>of sensuality that shrinks and burns
\n<\/span>everything away impurely, until<\/span><\/p>\n
\nto murk, dragging us back to deserted
\npublic piazzas, to desolate workshop norms \u2026.<\/p>\n
\nlights already sparkle in the throughfares,
\nfrom the mountain converted<\/p>\n
\n<\/span>across the bends of the Tiber to the vast
\nblack backdrop hanging in Monteverde air.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n
\nburst is followed by a sadness almost
\nmaritime. Nearly time for a repast \u2026.<\/p>\n
\nbunches of workers swinging from their doors.
\n<\/span>Unhurried soldiers on leave from their posts\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
\nof heaps of mud and dry piles of rubbish.
\nIn the shadows hide irate little whores<\/p>\n
\n<\/span>Not much further among the shanty slums
\nclinging to the hillside or in a gash\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
\nas rags play in a spring breeze no longer chill.
\nBurning with brash juvenile<\/p>\n
\nthe festive Roman evening with whistles
\nas they stride down the sidewalk, full<\/p>\n
\nthat serene night has finally come, rolling
\nmetal shutters crash down closed with joy.<\/p>\n
\nrustle in a wind as mild as after a squall,
\ngently sweeping over the basaltic tuff<\/p>\n
\nand blood. Every gust wafts waste,
\nthe odor of misery and despair.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
\n<\/span>They<\/i> are lost in it but lose it with peace
\n<\/span>of mind, since their hearts are full of its emotion.<\/span><\/p>\n
\n<\/span>in their enjoyment of the evening. For them
\nare myths born anew. But for\u00a0<\/span>me, conscious<\/p>\n
\n<\/span>now to act out of genuine passion
\nif I know our history has come to an end?<\/p>\n
\n \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0<\/em>
\nNon \u00e8 di maggio questa impura aria<\/em>
\nche il buio giardino straniero<\/em>
\nfa ancora pi\u00f9 buio, o l\u2019abbaglia<\/em><\/p>\n
\ndi bave sopra gli attici giallini<\/em>
\nche in semicerchi immensi fanno velo<\/em><\/p>\n
\nmonti del Lazio\u2026 Spande una mortale<\/em>
\npace, disamorata come i nostri destini,<\/em><\/p>\n
\nmaggio. In esso c\u2019\u00e8 il grigiore del mondo;<\/em>
\nla fine del decennio in cui appare<\/em><\/p>\n
\ne ingenuo sforzo di rifare la vita;<\/em>
\nil silenzio, fradicio e infecondo\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n
\nera ancora vita, in quel maggio italiano<\/em>
\nche alla vita aggiungeva almeno ardore;<\/em><\/p>\n
\ndei nostri padri \u2013 non padre. Ma umile<\/em>
\nfratello \u2013 gi\u00e0 con la tua magra mano<\/em><\/p>\n
\n(ma non per noi: tu, morto, e noi<\/em>
\nmorti ugualmente, con te, nell\u2019umido<\/em><\/p>\n
\nlo vedi?, che riposare in questo sito<\/em>
\nestraneo, ancora confinato. Noia<\/em><\/p>\n
\nsolo ti giunge qualche colpo d\u2019incudine<\/em>
\ndalle officine di Testaccio, sopito<\/em><\/p>\n
\nmucchi di latta, ferrivecchi, dove<\/em>
\ncantando vizioso un garzone gi\u00e0 chiude<\/em><\/p>\n
\nScelte, dedizioni\u2026. altro suono non hanno<\/em>
\normai che questo del giardino gramo<\/em><\/p>\n
\nche tuttavia la vita resta nella morte.<\/em>
\nNei cerchi dei sarcofaghi non fanno<\/em><\/p>\n
\ndi gente laica le laiche iscrizioni<\/em>
\nin queste grige pietre, corte<\/em><\/p>\n
\nsfrenate senza scandalo son arse<\/em>
\nle ossa dei miliardari di nazioni<\/em><\/p>\n
\nle ironie dei principi, dei pederasti,<\/em>
\ni cui corpi sono nell\u2019urne sparse<\/em><\/p>\n
\nQui il silenzio della morte \u00e8 fede<\/em>
\ndi un civile silenzio di uomini rimasti<\/em><\/p>\n
\ndel Parco, discreto muta:e la citt\u00e0<\/em>
\nche, indifferente, lo confina in mezzo<\/em><\/p>\n
\nvi perde il suo splendore. La sua terra<\/em>
\ngrassa di ortiche e di legumi d\u00e0<\/em><\/p>\n
\numidit\u00e0 che chiazza i\u00a0 muri intorno<\/em>
\na smorti ghirigori di bosso, che la sera<\/em><\/p>\n
\nsentori d\u2019alga\u2026. quest\u2019erbetta stenta<\/em>
\ne inodora, dove violetta si sprofonda<\/em><\/p>\n
\no fieno marcio, e quieta vi prelude<\/em>
\ncon diurna malinconia, la spenta<\/em><\/p>\n
\ndi clima, dolcissimo di storia, \u00e8<\/em>
\ntra questi muri il suolo in cui trasuda<\/em><\/p>\n
\nricorda altro umido, e risuonano<\/em>
\nfamiliari da latitudini e<\/em><\/p>\n
\nlaghi spersi nel cielo, tra praterie<\/em>
\nverdi come fosforici biliardi o come<\/em><\/p>\n
\narrotolato al collo ai partigiani<\/em>
\ne, presso, l\u2019urna, sul terreno cereo,<\/em><\/p>\n
\nL\u00ec tu stai, bandito e con dura eleganza<\/em>
\nnon cattolica, elencato tra estranei<\/em><\/p>\n
\ne vecchia sfiducia, ti accosto, capitato<\/em>
\nper caso in questa magra serra, innanzi<\/em><\/p>\n
\nquaggi\u00f9 tra questi liberi. ( O \u00e8 qualcosa<\/em>
\ndi diverso, forse, d pi\u00f9 estasiato<\/em><\/p>\n
\nd\u2019adolescente di sesso con morte\u2026)<\/em>
\nE, da questo paese in cui non ebbe posa<\/em><\/p>\n
\nqui nella quiete delle tombe \u2013 e insieme<\/em>
\nquale ragione \u2013 nell\u2019inquieta sorte<\/em><\/p>\n
\npagine nei giorni del tuo assassinio.<\/em>
\nEcco qui ad attestare il seme<\/em><\/p>\n