Doug Roy, Over the Falls, Cut Paper
“In der Zeit des Verrats / Sind die Landschaften schön.”
IV. Must we have a future?
Mouches de mes soleils noirs / […] /
Partez, petits désespoirs, /
Petits espoirs, douleurs, joies.
Verlaine, Jadis. Prologue
Can’t we seize joy, our hopes, our despair relevant as flies?
If you measure these things, the sun will be exactly there, again,
And under it, this roof, and under it, us – again – or people like us.
Civil wars are being fought between clouds, between elements,
But we may stop agonizing over what endless nights would get us,
As though we could buy the stars at the market, today, tomorrow and …
Species, singers and women are still being murdered,
Yet, there’s a respite here no god could ever dream,
A shift from metaphysics to mediocrity, the wallpaper of private days,
What revolutions and constitutions should promise: be at peace with
This miracle of nothingness, learn from the indifference of light
And the empty spaces around it, to mean something between them,
And let it go, collect the darkness we have been paying for all this time,
And, like the shadow of a caress over your skin, kiss, as the eclipse is doing.
____________________
Massimiliano Nastri