The Meditated Death

Carla Rossi

First Canto
O sister of shadow,
darker in the brightest of lights,
you chase me, death.
In an untouched garden
naive craving bore you,
and peace,
pensive death,
was lost on your mouth.
Since that moment
I have heard you in the flows of my mind
deepening distances,
aching imitator of the eternity.
Venomous mother of ages,
in the fear of throb
and loneliness,
punished and laughing Beauty,
in the slumber of flesh,
fugitive dreamer,
sleepless athlete
of our greatness,
once you have tamed me, tell me:
Will my shadow fly long
in the melancholy of the living?
Second Canto
The dark vigil of our fathers
with its crazy blandishments
hollows out the intimate lives
of our unhappy mask
(enclosure of the infinite).
Death, still word,
sand laid as a bed
by blood,
I hear you singing like a locust
in the darkened rose of reflections.
Third Canto
The eternal deception of our fathers
Engraves secret wrinkles
On our unhappy masks.
In the broad light,
you, confused silence,
insist like tense locusts.
Fourth Canto
Clouds took me by the hand.
Upon the hill, I consume space and time
like your harbinger,
like a dream, divine death.
Fifth canto
You have closed your eyes.
A night is born,
a night full of false holes,
of dead sounds,
like corks
of nets dropped into the water.
Your hands become a breath
of inviolable distances,
as unreachable as ideas,
and the moon’s ambiguity
and its swinging — so tender —
if you want to lay them on my eyes,
they touch my soul.
You are the woman
who goes by like a leaf
and you leave the trees like a fire during fall.
Sixth canto
O beautiful prey,
nocturnal voice,
the way you move
raises my fever.
Only you, demented memory,
could capture freedom.
On your flesh, unreachable
and wavering in turbid mirrors,
what crimes, dream,
didn’t you lead me to commit?
With you, ghosts, I have no restraint
and my heart is filled with your remorse
when a new day rises.