Tania Calcinaro 

Übersetzer:in

Have you ever thought

you are God?

I have, always,

if the intertwined thread

that the life

of men omits

is the infinite writing.

You know that, because like

the others you skipped it.

The thread that holds

and saves your

entrance as puppets

is me.

It’s me, compelled

to wait, the impassable,

the unravelled

that even if

read has always been

overlooked.

You poet thief.

I have always known

that in this

overlooked page

is your life.

Antonio?

You with fierce look on your face…

on the book counter.

You inattentive

and repressed boy… Antonio…

Where are you

now?

You see, here everything has already happened.

Men are trying

to relax. The day has open

eyes and the sun is an instant.

It keeps everybody quiet.

As if I really didn’t exist.

See, you are also distant

and intricate. Irritating, while

you sign your pact. As if you

didn’t see me, as if I

were the night, exact and malignant,

introvert, like the nail of the cat.

See, all words live by now

a notice to quit, as if

I really didn’t exist, as if

we never made sense

and somebody had always

tried to count us

(I suddenly think

that if I managed to emerge

I’d become throbbing.

Try to think of it. You’d have

two hearts. Like your mother

before you were born).

Miracles. Gardens. You chasing

the magical cloud. Then altars. An olive

branch and the white woollen thread.

Again: nobody comes. Again:

isn’t it strange? Imagine, I tell myself.

Imagine the contest. The room.

The dim light.

The sword. And that melting pot of names

and blood that is the monster.

Son of the white bull with bewitched

tongue. Evasive vocabulary.

Of words with no sex.

Imagine, I tell myself, the immense

charade when he hits.

Again: the thread doesn’t taut.

Again: isn’t it strange?

Where are you now, which silly

hand has suspended your name?

If you were dead…

beyond… If you were dead

would I still make sense?

Leaned against this entrance.

The hand raised, funny,

in my heart.

Then there were the almost

silent nights, from the bed you heard

the noises of others, of women workers feeling

the heat, of children clerks

lost in their collections.

You counted the lost sheep,

organized them, they always

assaulted the idiotic shepherd

you identified with.

In the streets the wheels

of bicycles, it was weird

to hear them on the manholes,

the sounds roused, the sounds

out there seemed

eternal.

Like the naked boys

on the grass full of cigarettes.

You felt yourself in the beds

of others, in their

sheets, you convened

the interlaced legs,

the backs, you removed

your eyeshadow.

It was strange to hear

children in sleep,

they seemed dead,

you trained your hearing

on improvised trees,

lost in their voids.

One could hear the bodies rustle,

asleep. One could hear

the dreams.

Can I? Can I become him?

Become what he

imagines.

But I am this page!

I am just this page.

This page that says

I am this page.

This

page.

This page that wants

to get out of this page.

Get out of this page…

Without pretending not to understand.

Getting out means

getting in.

Being someone else

that doesn’t write.

Like me (don’t pretend

you don’t understand).

Getting out means

becoming.

Becoming what he

(what I?)

imagines.

Can I get out and become

(this page?)

Can I? Can I become him?[…]

That’s why you dreamed of me.

You dreamed of me lying

like a woman before

intimacy. Was I

love? Was I wait?

Every time you perceived me

different but you called me

by the same name.

I was your cellar, your

descent. Your life,

your death, unresolved.

So in the morning you woke up

in defence of your destiny.

Of your bunch of keys,

of the doors you opened

and locked, of your cunning

colleagues. You left me beyond.

Like a boring story,

like the theft of the hearts

of others. Beyond you.

Like a thing.

You taught youths

craziness. Maybe that’s why

you strove to make believe.

You dreamed of aphasic verse

a little library

to hold tight, a dream

of metal, full of frames.

You had understood you were

unheard, you were living

like the sounds of roots

or the sense of the horse’s

run, toward the endless

world. You had no friends

but the thunder and the rooms

where you sometimes created yourself,

or the furious yellow

in Eurydice’s eyes

and the bag where you stowed

revolts and dances.

You weren’t looking for happyness.

Sometimes you dreamed of deep

Into the skin, deep into it

tenderly, coldly.

Like the rain

going deep into the sea.

Because like the sea

you felt you were September,

you felt you protected odour

of the rebellious animal,

slipping away in the luminous water.

You weren’t asking for love. You dreamed

of chasing it in the suspicious

air of the land of the Name,

among silent things

where once you slept

like a colour. […]

I wish I’d  

Never been in there.

In the wind that opened me

(chased me)

I chased another page

(in the air)

that became, like me,

an inviolated

unnecessary thing.

And yet I could have changed

his story. Improvise it.

Inside me the joy, the sibylline

understanding that save us,

inside me the wish

for waiting (inside me)

inside me our story.

Inside me.

Inside me the joy,

the silent road

with no way out.

Don’t go. Don’t go.

Once upon no time...

Overlooked. I’ve been

overlooked. One night

he will talk about me,

he will say: what a pity, I

never met her,

and he’ll drink French wine

forgetting my life

once again .

Hell laugh, telling

About other books and women

lost in the Ocean.

He will not regret me.

Me that could have changed

his life.

He simply

ignored me.

He quickly skimmed

the page next to me

(fierce look on his face)

abruptly closing

the precious book

in which I was born.

Like a thing.

Like the things

of the world that just stay

things. Unknown and

lonely things. Silent.

You had always known

that I was not there

yet in the pain

of the things, of the things

of the world that just stay

things. I wasn’t there,

because pain

is in the page full

of things, unknown

lonely things. Silent.

You had always known

that I was the name

of the things, in the infinite

page huddled up

in itself, like a thing.

You had always known

that I was there, life

huddled up in itself,

the painful one […]