"when i am alone, i hear the thrum of blood pumping against my shirt. i feel my mother and grandmother wrap their arms around me until we are all chest to chest, the mirrors of our hearts beating in sync, as unending as the ocean lapping the shore"
"The moment you feel your star cooling off
and so you pull it out of your chest
and stitch it on your jacket like a badge,
or on the collar of your coat
so that others may finally notice it."
(Please check out this poem on https://italianpoetry.it/poems/sia-pace-ai-frati/ for the full experience: help with the translation, listening to the reading out loud, and some more notes to the most difficult words.)
A small anticlerical epigram: priests, stay in your place!
"New fires that can scar
As readily as these move
Complaisant hearts to lift -
Are also spectacles
Witnessed by those in love,
Withstood by the very small -
And by laborious making-shift
Rendered common as stars."
"I filled my backpack with rocks
& loveletters to the deep & swung
it into the lake. I grew up with hardened
shoreline instead of sand between my toes."
"But if the blood
Pumping through my veins could freeze
Like the river in Toronto then I'd be pleased
You said I made you feel warm
Said I made you feel warm inside"
"these silent spaces sprout seeds
of a mute beginning
and I am left at the end of the circle
contemplating running the track of
my choices
yet again
breathless
from fear"
I hear you call, pine tree, I hear you upon the hill, by
the silent pond
where the lotus flowers bloom, I hear you call, pine tree.
What is it you call, pine tree, when the rain falls,
when the winds
blow, and when the stars appear, what is it you call, pine
tree?
I hear you call, pine tree, but I am blind, and do not
know how to
reach you, pine tree. Who will take me to you, pine tree?
-- 'I Hear You Call, Pine Tree' by Yone Noguchi
"As every new day waking finds its pitch
Selecting a fresh angle, so the sun
Hangs down its veils, so the old verbs
Change their invocation and their mood."