MAX MAZZOLI

6

Winter is back
And it reminds me of myself
Before I met you.

7

The house where we had lived for years
it was now empty and deserted without a piece of furniture.
We walked on the floors free of any encumbrance,
bewildered by the spaces now so different,
perceiving the ghost of the chair
or the table that had been in a specific position.
A taste of regret rose to the mouth
but it was not regret,
it was mere awareness that everything flows,
that things and lives move in new directions.
The things that were said in those corners,
the thoughts that formed close to those walls
Returned filtered by the distance of time.
Between a hesitant step and a glance at the window
open to the street below
or towards the garden or the courtyard,
forgotten events returned:
those we thought were insignificant
and now claiming their rights
to an existence of its own in the book of memories;
and the dramatic ones, which we would have liked to forget.
The screams and crying, the frustrations of the moment.
The sense of abandonment, the need to move forward,
knowing that even in this place,
now apparently empty,
a sediment of us remains,
light and non-existent like air,
abstract and elusive
but with the consistency of a magnetic force.
The secrets exchanged, what was said and the unspoken.
The smiles and the hopes that formed in that house.
Having rushed up the stairs,
Touching the door that you used to touch,
almost as if by holding this handle
I would now hold your hand
which was once here.

8

I keep reading you and it still surprises me.
The sharpness of your soft words
That expand towards spicy horizons
And that shake the senses until they tremble.
Always starting from here. From where we’ve always been.
From the only place that can be called ours.

I look out of the window in my room
And I see the blue house not far away
Of a colour between sea and sky
Like a lighthouse on a coast,
Against a background of other roofs and steeples
Which are islands and fragments
Of a city archipelago
Studded with anonymous men and women,
Just like us.
Each with a soul in pain
Pierced by a cross and a dream to pursue.

And if you have written another verse today too,
Skinny and lonely or rich and exuberant
I will read it with love, envy and jealousy.

9

But if even this is only appearance,
Then be aware that one verse is not enough,
Though it might be made of a slow calibrated rhythm
Where the hendecasyllable commands

To save us from being just trees
Anchored or simply resting on the ground.

And today finally, and again, I recount
My faults and my recurring mistakes -

I can’t listen. No ideas, no words.
I can’t get rid of pride.
I’m still not at peace with the world.
Besides, I’m not able to talk about poetry.

10

If you only knew how much weariness got in the way
Between us and the city that pretended to be distracted,
Asleep in your eyes
Indifferent to your gestures.

We used to wait for a sign
To take us away
Like a bus
On a determined and precise route,
In the same way as an already written path
In the stars – a firm and unrepeatable fate
Till the last drop.

And now it’s the present that we have left,
Nothing but now. The hours’ hour.
The Sancta Sanctorum that contains the mystery
And the miracle of transubstantiation.

If you only knew how much weariness it will still take
To forget about everything and everyone,
Not to believe anymore,
To not care and let it go.
To be just what we have been,
Nothing less, nothing more.

The first five poems are published here.