Out of Bounds (eBook)

Table of Contents 14
Foreword 12
I. Landscape 18
Lugano 20
August4, 1983 22
Beggar with Saint Vitus' Dance 24
Caretaker 27
Chiaroscuri 30
Charterhouse of Maggiano 32
"The Deep Heart's Core" 34
Eris 35
Leaving 36
You No Longer Sail the Boat 38
Exile 40
Memory-house 41
"Garda See" 44
Stay 46
Night Walks Unaware 48
The Sap of Oleander Thickened in Your Veins 50
II. Something Flowering 52
In Sevilla 54
Return to "El Almendral" 56
Clarity Over the Adriatic 57
Middlehours, Gulf of Marseilles 58
Avignon, 1984 59
Exiles 60
Landscape 62
Evening-time Collage 63
Entering a Sunken Garden 65
Lights at Romsdal 66
"Not Blue Roses" 68
III. Quarrel with Death 70
Sunset 72
Insomnia 73
Transitions 74
Night Over Gibraltar 76
Ravenna, 1985 77
Prison Night 78
Telephone Call, 3 a.m 79
Requiem 80
As Rain the Flesh 81
On the Shoulder of the Westward Wind 82
Fish 83
Long Distance 84
Sure Thing 85
What Will Happen to You? 86
IV. Miserere 88
Miserere 90
Mine-field—1946 92
Sing a Lullaby 94
Orders: Don't Let Him See Your Shadow 95
In Memory of RobertoTinti, Called Bob 96
Out of Bounds 98
War Village 100
August Night in the Emilian Lowlands 102
This Sunday Long Ago 104
Po Valley 106
Auschwitz Revisited 108
Diaspora for John Pauker 110
Song of a Mother to Her Child 111
Frankfurt am Main 113
V. At the Edge of the Land 118
Rain 120
Spring 1982 121
Confluence 122
I Shall Be There 124
Black Cemetery in Georgetown 126
Melpomene: the Singing One 128
Late Afternoon 129
"Je m'appelle..." 131
"See Me," 133

Entering a Sunken Garden (p. 48)

After a day-long airline strike in Milan,

hours of airport tedium in Heathrow,

lost luggage in New York, I find thé garden

waiting as a mother, arms sretched out,

a fragrant haven of herbs and flowers.

As I climb down five steps, bright colors billow,

floating in silence up from a sultry floor.

Late July cuts mosaics in salvia-edged

flowerbeds and tiled paths glow verdigris.

My quick moods slacken through smooth balms that snap

like mountain brackens and lead to a deep corner

where a wrought-iron bench rests, and a whole world

nests forever, where I sit and nearly

whelm in memories of other summers that

eddy in shadow, and thé garden stretches

and argues against my wanderlust.

Lights at Romsdal

Day. The bus glides along thé Trolls` Road

as through thé séquence of a dream.

Stream after stream, U-shaped valleys,

glacial lakes, ice-evened mountains, sated

in argentine light, hâve left delight

and turbulence fluid in my mind. Now,

rocks that bear thé names of pawns—King,

Bishop, Queen—seem beneficent deities

bathed in silver showering from heaven,

and I feel a pigmy in primai awe

before a game of beauty among old giants.

This is as one dreams beauty to be. The mind

aches to find new words to render thé changes

lily-light brings to air, mountains water,

but ail sensés succumb, alert yet dumbstruck

to a speechless siège, until my eyes blink pain.

There is too much brightness to bear

as if thé air, bare peaks and waterfalls

cried for it and an incontinent god

complied. Then thé unquiet star-mark

implanted in my heart sensés violence

and dark shadows striking through that light.

Night. In thé underground place

beyond thé root of my closed eyes,

ice-green-blue lake after ice-green-blue

lake, holding within their clear surface

thé mountains and sourceless lakes

of thé sky, flash and shake me awake.

Out of thé window I hang awhile between Bishop

and Queen, seeking thé propitious signs

men unconsciously plead for.

Even before my soûl reaches

for thé strength rocks seem to possess

against thé force of wind and ice,

silver lights that flow, pitiless,

below, catch and make me touch

thé cold frailty of stone, and I know

I am a watcher and a pawn in a lingering

game of passing things, in thé hand

of a grave player who ponders his next move.