Chidago Canyon Petroglyph
VERTIGINE
Mucchio di papaveri sbrecciati in un canto,
tenue sorge una musica che avevamo dimenticato,
la musica del nostro principio.
E non importa se a dirlo in versi è una malinconia,
fu il passaggio e la rosa d’ombra credo
inseguita nel suo dislessico sfiorirsi addosso.
Come quando sulla punta dell’addio
germoglia il ritorno o come quando la lama dell’attimo
sembra perpetuarsi ben oltre la sua eco.
È una forma di gloria, io credo,
la luccicanza dell’abbandono in tenebroso serpente,
in fantasioso stordimento di forme,
laggiù, spazzate via…
La nostra materia è un filo appeso all’infinito,
un refolo di vento la spezza.
Noi siamo soli
nel guscio della vertigine.
VERTIGO
translated by Massimo Fantuzzi
Worn poppies pile whittle from a recess
that softly grows – music we had forgotten,
the music of our foundation.
Never mind if to put it in verses is a single melancholy,
the passing that once was and that rose-shaped shadow
chased I believe, in its a-lexical withering.
Similar to when a comeback germinates
from the cusp of a farewell or when the blade
of time instant seems to perpetuate beyond its echo.
A form of glory I believe –
recklessness, dazzling under the tenebrous snake
in an imaginative daze of forms
there, swept beneath.
Our substance, a thread that hangs onto infinity,
a gust of wind breaks it.
Us alone,
in the shell of vertigo.
____________
Ettore Fobo
Review by Dave Mehler
All three of these poems offer us experiences. They require multiple rereadings and some running to the dictionary to be able to enter in. Even then I’m not sure I feel invited as a reader, certainly not seduced, but perhaps tolerated? The speaker is diffident? kind of like a homeless person who is communicating, letting you listen in to their dissociated ramblings, maybe even desperate for you to listen, but not the least bit confident you will understand, see them, or know much less share their pain. In other words, if Pound were the model for Mr. Fobo I’d say he does a good job emulating. The writing is deep, multi-layered (wrought?) and rarefied, and if the reader meditates and rereads there’s some transference of meaning and communication. I get the sense that the poet and speaker don’t care if they are understood, but below this there’s a desperate desire to be understood and seen? Maybe a remnant of hope that’s been dashed repeatedly. From this standpoint the poems are sad. And I have to take them. They are as good and full of meaning as anything anyone sends us. They are artifacts of a life of the mind. Someone who has been ignored, and his genius unseen and unappreciated. The first one with the poppies makes me think of the war dead–poppies are a laden symbol in Europe, and I am brought in mind more of Eliot’s four quartets than I am Pound–but I haven’t ever studied Pound. It’s Eliot, without God however. This is what I think, right or wrong, perceptive or not.