Journal of Italian Translation - Brooklyn College - Academic Home ...

Barbara Carle / Fabio Scotto
4
ON THE SHORE
PROLOGUE
I am here and there is nothing yet.
I stare at the white walls of the room, the humidity stains beyond
the books on the desk and behind the glass cases. They look
at me aligned like soldiers of an army adrift in who knows which
Russia. No one else has stopped by, not even the custodian with
his flashlight for the final check.
The letters I haven’t answered for months, the ink stains from
stamps on envelopes making everything illegible, all handwriting
anonymous.
Time has stopped if it weren’t for this obstinate pulsing at my
carotids, invisible liquid foam in the blank night of vessels toward
which Egypt.
I look at the back of my hands, those transparent tiny veins
of blue beyond the veil of hair, roads that lose themselves at the
limits of my knuckles up to the transparent isthmus of my nails
and beyond the grey of my desk which the white paper obfuscates
with its lined brilliance.
Now I write on snow, not typical of May, memory deposited a
thick blanket between the pen and the wood. Like the lynx starved
for days I look for you in the snow following the imprint of your
blood, but the trace vanishes after the Holm oaks in the shadow
swallowing the light of the fiery sunset and the rare birds who cut
the horizon in black theory of wings.
At this hour who knows where you are if you are alive and
who cradles you in which grotto. If I were to cry, it would be a lake,
but the lake exists already. I might as well talk about it.
TOWARD CALCINATE
The bicycle path on a crisp morning, asphalt serpent amidst
the emerald green fields flooded with light. They go quietly rocking
one in the wake of the other, families with the father leading the
way, the smallest child asleep beneath, his helmet tied to the seat,
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