fragments from my sunless flat

five poems of Rossano Astremo

translated by Taddeo Roccasalda

One.

I can' go on breathing
if my head presses the feather pillow,
the infected acid pillow
laid on this unsteady bed
unable to contain me, to absorb me,
lingering in the warm corner of its painless space,
opening and spreading thousand kinds of worms, leaves and mouths,
among spasms of hours unable to explode,
among sobs of minutes turned into scentlees pulp,
on this languishing dust,
without transparent eyes to give birth
to the last drops of love.

Two.

On this burning fire that lights up timeless alleys
I stoop - and pray with all my deformed strength turned into ashes.
Every balance is banished,
every effort to blow beyond the limits is lost,
every cardboard-head is melt, with the twisted and imploded city,
faded fire of an exhausted, bleeding power
with the last shreds of light plunging into my head,
making it burn senselessly.

Three.

Together, for not getting torn, for not coming unstitched, to go on trusting
in life that shines, for not dying shut up in this dark
dirty street full of wet and trodden cardboards,
of infected syringes, with scary blood stuck on them,
with tramps hanging in space, tasting that filthy
intoxicating sense of defeat, which slips into the neck and doesn't leave alone,
that sense of defeat, being reflected as a weightless dry beam.

Four.

Not now, please, this suffocating place makes me sick,
moments of closure waiting for an istant of respite, twisted moments
as prickly brains looking for a vision,
among open and cracked cement that cannot contain us,
among filthy and dirty pains that cannot shut us up.
I cannot step forward;
through this rational and regular wood my glass of whisky
shines destructively and my eyes
drown in the smashing lights,
in this cock-exciting and knee-crumbling evening.

Five.

What's all this terror that's wetting my soul?
Exploded buildings, bodies torn to pieces, exhausting religions,
military people swallowing uranium, nations licking each other's arse,
all this chaos pisses me off, catches my breath,
bars my heart, buries all my regular throbs.
What's all this wasting of years in shooting stomachaches?
The traffic lights are not flashing, the bookshops are rising,
the street lamps are shooting light upwards,
burning the grey sky that imprisons the stars.