Davide Trame

 

Arena

There's this roof straight out of our window
that is not a roof really, a tarmac floor rather
of a house they have long ago stopped building.
It's now where they throw food for the birds,
a few sparrows soon overwhelmed by pigeons
and gulls, which are the strongest and noisiest.
You hear their shrieks as they fiercely wallop
their morsels, two beaks often thrashing,
tearing the same scrap, while all around
there's a hell of wings flapping, feathers floating,
in a bustle of feet ticking.
At sunrise you are not startled by it, you are
almost lulled instead and wake up slowly.
It's a tantrum you welcome, you feel it
on your side, a glad, fulfilling heaven's rage
plummeting down and stroking your premises.
It gives you miles for stirring in a broad sun
and tells you the arena is ready for the pullulating
trimmings of the day.

 

Black

Dry, luminous day, a plump black child
weightless with frenzy and joy
dashes off on the sand out of a group of whites,
he is the first to splash into the sea,
a Gaugin's sparkling blotch, so much alive
but not more than the sepia-black bollard
by the lighthouse, casting forth
a swarm of sunlit needles,
iron gnawed by the salty wind's teeth
sweating off its ebony-like rust
under the noon horizon's stare
and crab's eyes darting in the glare.

 

A Pocket Full of Shells

Colours and consistencies
that make you finger the distances,
chance left them on this spot to be picked up
and you feel you all came from down there,
waves after waves, forgetting features
under the sunlight's stare.
Walk home then, patting the booty on your thigh,
cherish the contact with the horizon's threads,
in the evening you'll be lulled into sleep
with in your hands the texture, the still
amazed dance of all that might have been.

 

Havana Seafront

A street in the ocean roar
imbued with it as in a recurrent dream
of a rushing crowd in the foam of the shore,
feet dangling from a wall
lapped by curling wave tongues,
fishing-rod lines cast in the currents
of the water throng.
Gargoyles of Spanish buildings,
salty yellows in the travelling spindrift,
the stucco crumbling and falling into pools
strewn for ages along the road margins.

There's this gap stretching inside us
calling for shores like this, for
a resisting rhythm buried in our dark,
palm trees spreading and retaining sunlight
following us along our silent halls,
the sea roar a hiss
in the cracks of the flower patterned floors.

Roots fluctuate as sea mirrors
and cry through foundations simple and tenacious,
an old woman displays the white lace of her bedcover,
the door of her room open to the waves,
the vast double bed facing the pier haze,
but this not Havana, it's a lane
of a small sunlit Mediterranean village,
the long and quiet surf crashing on the walls
and resting at the bottom of our hearts and throats,
waiting for an echo of its dawn
in the memory of all seafronts.

 

First Train

North Pole and South Pole, you wanted to believe
were the last two stops after yours.
It was almost half a century ago
and the locomotive was sputtering smoke,
inside the carriage hearing the shots
you felt like being in a belly breathing the run,
in the final stretches the engine became an impatient
airy machine gun.

When you arrived at the station they were one or two with a car
but then they became a crowd, the whole village,
a chain of handshakes along the road;
you loved the gravel, its white dust,
you relished being far from the city stones;
and in that light, a winding trail of dawn,
you kept on running after rushing railtracks,
hardly waiting to take the bike
and screech away on a hedges' hike.

Tearing

Bora day, straight claws of air
in a breathing swarm on the strand,
you shiver stared at by the blinding sunlight's teeth.
The world is broken through and sails wide open,
the sky is an almost aching blue that seems
to have never enough of being scraped clean and pierced.
You skirt the undulating line of foam rags,
dried crests bubbling on the hardened sand,
torn sizzling bits swelling in the wind like spun sugar
and with simple jerks cast forth in the roaring
bright emptiness, far beyond all you know now for sure:
your body gaily thrashed forward by the swaying gusts,
your breath and your hammering heart, so close still
and not yet torn apart.

 

The Touch

Sea instants, the patched stretch of the sun's glare
and the wholeness of a net of ripples on the water-skin,
you breathe quietness in a blink while your thoughts stream,
you intercept this fullness as a flash in between distractions
and although it's always almost gone you know
it can pierce pains, purposes, memories and silence
with the touch of a simple smile from bottomless irises.

 

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