Poetry five

Margherita’s remains

Margherita’s remains
just words
etched images
tracing across my mind’s landscape
Like highways over your Piamonte
they outline
a map of passages
an indication only
of a journey’s complexity
Turning to the light
and to the dark
away from all you had
all you could have had
unable to hide your pain
you carried Death on your shoulder
for all to see
We saw our own fears
in your sorrowful solitude
and self-consciousness
in your willful abandonments
So it’s the good fortune
of the dead
(especially the young dead?)
to know
who remembers
who used who
who loved
who even cared
Answers we confronted
at each taste
to unutterable questions
I can’t now for sure
recall the last time
I saw your blue eyes
though I expect
like a dream
arriving remembering
them
slipping in then out
like your life
I’ll see you
when I’ll see you
Or not?
O how we failed you

Napoli December 1997

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Fragile Joy

In the searching
between souls
for intensity of feeling,
and from feeling,
meaning-
the wheel of my heart turns
its revolutions
honest sincere,
struggling against separateness and loneliness,
carrying me tearfully
an ever so fragile joy-
like your embrace,
passing
yet remaining imprinted
in folds of experience,
always close
to an essential truth of my being.


Rocchetta Ligure, Italy September 22, 2002