Long-listed for the 2023 Griffin Poetry Awards
Violin for the One-Arm Man
2
I’ve, of course, felt all these for a while or better, who
can tell what infamy a chair can create, otherwise, why
it keeps quiet?
Or whether this ashtray has the spiteful laughter of one
who confuses me with the simplest things and
if I wasn’t the tuner (you must remember) I’d like to
be the tailor; indeed a slow thinking one too, so I can
pass the thread through the wrong end and each evening
I take the sewing machine on my shoulders because
as I’ve mentioned I don’t sleep with everyone even if
life makes a liar of me; what is our life before all
one has wished?
Until, with all these details buried in the floor, you gain
a beautiful private grave
although the owner comes demanding his rent;
however soon enough he’s punished when one night
a new tenant kills him
believing it was him who was making all the noise, then
he writes a letter to the defence of humanity and finally
he takes his supper standing by the sink;
of course, nothing was proven and the owner died later;
in fact, to bury him they had to collect him
from the walls
then, when I returned home, I rang the bell, certainly
no one was there
but what would it had cost this stupid ghost to open
the door earlier?
Or better, like Jesus who stayed for three days in
the grave,
impossible not to discover the true story;
but what’s the reason for being so anxious about my
colorful shoes? They have helped me a lot, I mean,
I put them on in front of a chair, I sat opposite them,
and the scenes that were to follow had to be emotional
if I didn’t hesitate as always
like the prayer that was at last received positively;
however she stays embarrassingly motionless and
doesn’t enter while the bitch of the first floor ripped the
whole sofa to find, to find what? When the best things
are inexistent at least until the sundown which
arrives
like mothers who just gave birth and descend again.
(If this poem touched you, you may find more about this beautiful book of translations in the following links)
https://draft2digital.com/book/4051627
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763564
