WINTER FRAGMENTS - Bartolo Cattafi Official Website · WINTER FRAGMENTS SELECTED POEMS 1945 ... when they moved back to Barcellona. ... and also his wife, the journey that Cattafi

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BARTOLO CATTAFI

WINTER FRAGMENTS SELECTED POEMS 1945-1979

TRANSLATED AND EDITED BY

RINA FERRARELLI

CHELSEA EDITIONS NEW YORK 2006


STATEMENT BY THE POET

I started when I was 21. Maybe it was the puttees, the hobnailed boots, the blisters on my feet

during basic training, the meager rations; maybe it was the nervous breakdown, the military hospital,

the sounds of the orderly turning the key in the lock, the epileptics falling on the floor with a thud, the

steps of the sleepwalkers, the screams of malingerers, and the glassy eyes of madmen. I could put the

blame on all this or on something else, something that was not working right inside of me; as it

happened, as soon as I was discharged from the hospital and I arrived in Sicily (it was the spring

of ’43), the war no longer existed for me as a monstrous extraordinary event.

I began to write poetry, I don’t exactly know how, and I was always in the throes of some kind

of intoxication, dazed by oversharp, oversweet sensations. The thousands of things offered me by that

enervating spring were magically pregnant with meanings, rich with very sharp and delicious

radiations. As in a second childhood, I began to number the things I love, to spell out in verse a naïve

inventory of the world.

All around me, the crashes of bombs and the blasts of Hurricanes and Spitfires… But I roamed

the colorful countryside feeding on tastes, smells, images; death was not an unnatural element in that

scene; it was like a peach tree in bloom, a hawk on a chicken, a lizard dashing across the path.

That’s how I wrote my first poems. Then time passes, the years follow one another, and so do

the encounters, the books, the vicissitudes and, all part of the detailed story that we day by day (or

perhaps only illuminate?), testing and pursuing the myths, the emblems that belong to us, repudiating

them, embracing them again, involving others in the playing out of this vital undertaking, following

always our most pressing interests, glandular secretions, ancestral legacies, the diagrams from internal

files, the rages, and fickle and faithful loves, the advancing and retreating stages of the common road.

The story of my poetry cannot but coincide with my story as a man. I reject and consider

forbidden cold determination of the intellect, the exercises (no matter how civilized), the experiments

that slyly or naively attempt the impossible throw of the dice.

I cannot fathom the “métier” of poet, the tools, the laboratory of this “métier”. That of the poet

is, in my opinion, a pure and simple human condition. Poetry belongs to our innermost biology, it

conditions and develops our destiny, and is a way like any other of being human. Beyond the mental

schemes, the foolish aspirations, the frigid volitions and learned masturbations, poetry is born under

the visible sign of the unforeseen (there are mysterious maturations, catalysts often difficult to

identify, unsuspected forces and forms that unleash themselves breaking the state of “quiet”, that leap

and break loose following the lines of a natural design to which one most bravely surrender, giving it

individual identity and strength, as much as one can, with wary vigilance in the middle of the

seductive forest of deceits, mirages, false representations). For me, poetry, then, is adventure, journey,

discovery, vital recovery of tribal idols, an attempt at deciphering the world, capture and possession of

fragments of the world, naked denunciation of the world in which one is man, a blood-stained

existential act.

But it might just be that in today’s world I’m mistaken, that I am naive, a simpleton: perhaps I

should be writing very different discourses. At any rate, I have, a thousand more reasons than

Apollinaire to appeal for mercy.

From the anthology Poesia italiana contemporanea, edited by Giacinto Spagnoletti, Guanda, 1969.


INTRODUCTION CATTAFI’S PLACE IN CONTEMPORARY ITALIAN LITERATURE

Bartolo Cattafi was born in Sicily, in the town of Barcellona, province of Messina, on July 6,

1922. His father, a physician, died four months before he was born. He was raised by his mother in

Mollerino until the age of ten, when they moved back to Barcellona. He was from a well-to-do family

and was able to continue his education, opting for the liceo classico, or literary studies with a stress on

classical sources. He was drafted into the army during WWII, and while he was undergoing training to

become an infantry officer at Forlì, he suffered a nervous breakdown. After his medical discharge

from the army, and his discharge from the military hospital in 1943, he went back to school and

earned a law degree, but never practiced. In 1947 he moved to Milan, where he worked in journalism

and advertising. He traveled extensively in Europe and North Africa, perhaps looking for his roots,

since Arabs, Carthaginians and Normans are three of the peoples, besides the Greeks, that settled

Sicily. He died of cancer in Milan on March 13, 1979.

Critics have placed Cattafi in the linea lombarda, a varied and loose group which Luciano

Anceschi defined in 1952, poets that include Vittorio Sereni, Luciano Erba, Giorgio Orelli and Nelo

Risi. The poets of this group, whether from Lombardy or not, partake of the practice of working with

concrete images from everyday life, a poesia in re, a poetry embodied in things, which makes me

think, of course, of William Carlos Williams. These poets, though, are European and not afraid to be

intellectual, regardless of what they claim. Cattafi, as well. His poems are not afraid to make

metaphysical leaps despite his exclusion of the intellect from the poetic process. “I reject and consider

forbidden the cold determinations of the intellect,” he says in his poetic statement. The linea lombarda

and the poets of the quarta generazione (born between 1921-1928, each generation being seven years

from the beginning of the century), with whom Cattafi is also classified, share the anti-rethorical

tradition of postwar Italy, but not the neo-realism. They were against the sensationalism and

flamboyant declamations of the past, as exemplified by D’Annunzio, and the difficulty of Montale and

of the early poetry of the hermetics, but they looked to Montale for the use of the objective correlative.

Cattafi uses metaphor organically, and in poems that become

more and more emblematic.

His poetry is the embodiment of post-war disillusionment. It dramatizes and echoes the

absurdities of war and the chaotic experiences that followed the war. His tone is often dry, ironic,

sometimes sardonic. As he himself tells us, Cattafi started writing after his medical discharge from the

army, when he was in his early twenties. That traumatic beginning has colored his attitudes, his

subjects and themes. There is violence, imagined, expected or perpetrated, often against the persona of

the poem or some other innocent victim. According to Silvio Ramat, the only clearly recognizable

condition for Cattafi and his contemporaries was the aftermath of the deluge. The only tradition they

accepted was “a tradition of fracture and diffidence" (Bartolo Cattafi in Letteratura Italiana: I

Contemporanei, (Milan: Marzorati, 1974), p. 1372). The reader will find intimations of a great

catastrophe in many poems—“Anthracite,” “Robinson,” “Wingspan,” “Above All”—and of the

breaking down of laws and moral positions. Some critics, Giovanna Wedel De Stasio among them, see

neo-baroque elements in his poetry, and many, perhaps following the lead of Raboni, Ramat and

others have compared him to Becket, Kafka and Michaux, and to the painters Bosch and Wols, There

are many aspects to the baroque, and Wedel De Stasio is very much aware of them when she says that

Cattafis poetry “is a significant testimony of a baroque style in twentieth century Italian literature

[emphasis mine].” She says: “Like the English Metaphysicals, Cattafi tried to grasp the fragments of

an unseizable reality by exploring verbal logic to the verge of absurdity. He bestows a metaphysical

significance upon common physical objects; existential interrogations mold the ethical and aesthetic

import of his poems” (Bartolo Cattafi 1922-1979 in Twentieth Century Italian Poets.

Second Series v.128 of Dictionary of Literary Biography (Detroit: Gale Research Inc., 1993) p. 112.)

Cattafi works close to the physical, never straying far from the object, even when he abandons the


“occasion,” as defined by Montale, transforming concrete reality with leaps and sharp turns into other

poetic realms. The word “leap” is important here, because none of his poems has the elaboration and

decorative surfaces which are often associated with the baroque—though the tone and mental bent

might still be there; on the contrary, his poems are usually short, stripped to

essentials, sometimes epigrammatic.

The line is important in his poetry, both literally and metaphorically. Lines, diamonds, squares

and other geometric shapes are a significant part of his figuration. Travel, both as voyage in space, and

voyage of the imagination, is one of the constants in his work from the very beginning to the very end.

He's the modern man, in motion, searching and restless. He also travels back in time, to ancient

Greece, and the Magna Grecia of which Sicily was part. Foreign places abound, mostly from North

Africa and northern Europe, especially in the early collections. Also winged creatures and means of

transportation: birds, insects and angels—good and bad—as well as wings, ships and trains. But in the

end all the journeys are into the interior, of the self and of the metaphor, even if one has to leave what

is pleasant and comfortable to get lost in the woods (“Anabasis”). The image of fire is ubiquitous, and

it is typical of Cattafi that he sees in fire the contradictions the element holds: heat and generative

power, danger and destruction. Iimages from the mineral kingdom abound, and include coal, iron,

quicklime, salt. We see flashes of light from blades, guns, razors; from anthracite

and provisional torches. And bones and blood clots continue the journey of exploration started by

other poets, Montale and Ungaretti among the first.

Raboni in his introduction to Poesie 1943-1979 (Milan: Mondadori, 1990) says, “To catch and

show shadows as solid objects and vice versa, belongs specifically to this poetry.” And he bears

witness to Cattafi’s genius and his vitality as a poet by asserting that Cattafi proudly refused to pay

whatever price one has to pay to figure largely in one’s time and perhaps as well to keep an eye on the

future. He goes on to say that Cattafi “understood and knew how to interpret (and gave witness to and

tirelessly repeated) … the essential, primordial gesture, the primary, and (in a juridical sense of the

word) ‘indisponibile’ [not disposable] function of poetry; [and that] it is then not surprising if his

texts, as the years go by, seem to acquire freshness and even novelty, while those of his

contemporaries, and not the least well-known among them, with the waning of the events or collective

emotions that fed their meaning, become dry and cracked to the point of being unexpectedly

indecipherable, mute (xiii).”

Cattafi has a firm place in the canon of contemporary Italian literature as a poet who spoke

uncompromisingly in the post-war period about human illusions and delusions, hopes and betrayals.

Cattafi was a complicated, complex man, a man of contradictions, of polarities (Raboni’s word), of

doubts and uncertainties, but also of faith—a consciousness of our limitations, of worlds in us and

outside of us about which we know nothing. “Difficult clarity humility," he says in “Above All." I feel

that affirmation despite everything is also expressed by the act of writing. According to Ada De

Alessandri, who was an interpreter of his work in the study I’ll mention shortly, and also his wife, the

journey that Cattafi undertook was always a spiritual quest (La spiritualità di Bartolo Cattafi (Milano:

All’Insegna del Pesce D’Oro, 1989).


From LE MOSCHE DEL MERIGGIO/THE FLIES OF NOON (1958)

OSWALD’S RESTAURANT

«Venerdì prossimo venturo

alle nove post meridiem

la nave partirà»;

sempre accade con fuoco

con stridore di ruggine, con rancido

sentore di salsedine.

Aspettando indugiamo in mezzo ai nostri

nomi coloriti, vino cibo

tabacco calda luce. Come un cieco

ci guarda il volto smaltato della pendola,

Oswald, greco, baffi grossi e neri,

possiede sedie, tavole, ragazze

allenate a sorridere e a guardare

di là dal muro, dai vetri, dalle cose

moleste in movimento

la galleggiante pace del gabbiano

la pura nave a fuochi spenti, ombra

in attesa sul mesto meridiano.

Dov’è il sesso, sorelle?

Esso scompare, è una scusa del cuore,

come una mano che si stringe. E addio,

entriamo sotto le stelle, nelle tenebre e in questa

antica, rovente tempesta che aggroviglia

tenere fibre, i fili, la vermiglia

rete che ci tiene.

(Glasgow, 1952)

OSWALD’S RESTAURANT

“This coming Friday

at nine post meridiem

the ship will sail”;

it happens always with fire

with a screeching of rust,

a rancid salty smell. Waiting

we linger in the midst of our colorful

names, wine food

tobacco warm light. The enameled

pendulum face looks at us like a blindman,

Oswald, a Greek with a thick black mustache,

has chairs, tables, girls

trained to smile and to look

beyond the Wall, the panes, the bothersome

things in motion

the gull’s floating peace

the pure ship with its fires out, a shadow

waiting on the sad meridian.

Sisters, where is sex?

It disappears, it‘s a pretext of the heart,

like a hand we squeeze. Soon it’s goodbye,

we go into the darkness under the stars, and in

[this

ancient, scorching storm that entangles

tender fibers, threads, the bright red net

that holds us in.


STORIA

Dov’è l’antica Grecia

con dracme sonore

come il mare d’Omero?

Non ne so nulla, ho un tondo

gettone di telefono,

passo quando un colore

di semaforo consente

vinco la fame, i fiori sono cari

solo donne e cadaveri li amano,

ma nel palmo sudato della mano

c’è malamente incisa qualche cosa.

Avrò forse un’anima che giunge

più in alto del telegrafo

come il passero, l’uccello d’ogni giorno.

HISTORY

Where is ancient Greece

with drachmas sonorous

as Homer’s sea?

I haven't a clue, I have a round

telephone token,

I cross when a color

of the traffic light says that I can,

I defeat hunger, flowers are dear,

only women and corpses love them,

but there is something badly carved

in my sweaty palm.

I might have a soul that reaches

higher than the telegraph poles

like the sparrow, the bird of every day.


From L’OSSO, L’ANIMA / THE BONE, THE SOUL (1964)

QUALCOSA DI PRECISO

Con un forte profilo,

secco, bello, scattante,

qualcosa di preciso

fatto d’acciaio o d’altro

che abbia fredde luci.

E là, sul filo della macchina, l’oltraggio

d’una minima stella rugginosa

che più corrode e corrompe più s’oscura.

Un punto da chiarire, sangue

d’uomo, briciole

vile oppure grumo

perenne, blocco di coraggio.

SOMETHING PRECISE

With a strong profile,

sharp, handsome, leaping,

something precise

made of steel or something else

with a cold gleam.

And there on the tool’s edge, the ravages

of the tiniest rusty star

which darkens the more it corrodes and decays.

A point to make clear, human

blood, insignificant

bit or everlasting

clot, block of courage.


COSE

Erano poche le vere,

quattro cinque.

Lottarono con altre concorrenti,

fecero viluppo, vinsero,

vennero alla luce.

Su quattro cinque pali

tentammo di vivere in palude.

THINGS

The true ones were few,

four five.

They fought with the other contestants,

tangled, won,

came to light.

On four five poles

we tried to live in the swamp.


BAEDEKER

Il faro è visibile, vicino,

il mare anche nell’alto

inverno è caldo,

sabbia candida e fine,

in questa

stagione non è caro.

E non è vero. In questa

e in ogni altra stagione

se fai parte del quadro

darai un’orribile moneta.

Scivola, vola,

non immergere un dito,

non indagare sulla squame d’indaco.

I vecchi ingranaggi sono pronti

e precisi, prudenti.

Udrai anche cantare.

Scappa, metti

ali ai piedi

tappi di cera agli orecchi.

BAEDEKER

The lighthouse is visible, near,

the sea warm even

in the heart of winter,

the sand fine, dazzling white,

in this

season it’s not expensive.

Not true. In this

and in any other season,

if you’re part of the picture

you’ll pay a dreadful price.

Slip away, fly,

don't dip one toe in,

don’t try to find out about the indigo scales.

The old gears are ready

and precise, prudent.

You’ll even hear singing.

Flee, put wings

on your feet

wax in your ears.


UN 30 AGOSTO

Si vide subito che si metteva bene:

eventi macroscopici nessuno,

il sole a un passo da settembre

diede la prima razione

alle isole di fronte,

il mare mandò lampi di freschezza,

il caldo soltanto fra tre ore,

un immenso celeste, ancora un giorno

per l’uva e gli altri frutti di stagione,

tra i pochi rumori di paese

l’ossigeno sibilando disse

di non farcela più con quel suo cuore.

Di primo mattino la morte di mia madre.

A 30TH OF AUGUST

You could see right away it would be good:

not one macroscopic event,

the sun one step from September

gave its first ration

to the islands across,

the sea sent flashes of coolness,

the heat only three hours away,

an immense blue sky, yet one more day

for the grapes and other seasonal fruit,

in the midst of the town’s few noises

the oxygen, hissing, told us

it could no longer deal with her heart.

Early in the morning my mother’s death.


EREDI DELLA GRECIA

Popoli prolifici,

eredi in Italia della Grecia,

arrancano portando masserizie,

picchiano nocche ai freddi profilati,

tentano la dura integrazione.

Luogo di provenienza

leggibile nel volto,

nel colore del pelo,

nel parlare.

Non conoscono gli ordini

dorico ionico corinzio,

l’acanto innestato da Callimaco.

Seguirono soltanto transumanze

in montagna o sul mare

di pecore e di pesci,

di magre stagioni lungo stretti

sentieri tormentosi.

Non ebbero tempo e modo di capire

i tarli del tempo,

le grandi prostrazioni.

Ricordano la luce dell’estate

l’olio l’aglio il pane

le ridde iridate degli insetti,

hanno fate morgane,

fanno errori, sono

tra Scilla, Cariddi e sempre

lontani dalla Grecia.

Dovranno penare, camminare,

conoscere la Grecia.

HEIRS OF GREECE*

Prolific peoples,

heirs of Greece in Italy,

they trudge along carrying crops

and beat their knuckles against the cold edges

attempting a difficult assimilation.

The place of origin

legible on their faces,

in their hair color,

their speech.

They do not know the orders

Doric Ionic Corinthian,

the acanthus grafted by Callimachus.

They only followed the migrations

in the mountains or on the sea

of sheep and fish,

lean seasons along narrow

torturous paths.

They never had the time and the way to

[understand

time’s slow erosions

the great prostrations.

They remember the light of summer

oil garlic bread

the insects’ wild iridescent dance,

they have fate morgane

and make mistakes, they live

between Scylla and Charybdi's, and always

a long way from Greece,

They must endure, perdure,

get to know Greece.

* Scylla and Charybdis, personified as female monsters in classical mythology, refer to a dangerous rock on the mainland

side of the Strait of Messina and the opposite whirlpool on the Sicilian side, literally and metaphorically between a rock

and a hard place. Some scholars say the danger was pirates, Greek on one side, Carthaginians on the other.


From L’ARIA SECCA DEL FUOCO/THE DRY AIR OF FIRE (1972)

IL COLONNELLO SABBATINI

Il colonnello Sabbatini

del 17° Distruzione di Forlì

ci prendeva per granatieri

alti e grossi

ce la faceva lunga e dura

invece eravamo fanti mingherlini

già diventati fantocci

col ripieno di segatura.

COLONEL SABBATINI

Colonel Sabbatini

of the 17th Destruction of Forlì

took us for big and tall

grenadiers

and gave us a hard time

we were instead puny infantrymen

become puppets

with a sawdust filling.


VOI SICILIANI E NOI ITALIANI

Il giorno dello sbarco

il generale Roatta

si volse a noi dai muri:

«Voi Siciliani e noi Italiani

respingeremo lotteremo vinceremo».

Roteò poscia la sua sciabola di latta.

Bei tempi quelli, e non duri.

YOU SICILIANS AND WE ITALIANS

The day of the landing

General Roatta

addressed us from the walls:

“You Sicilians and we Italians

we’ll repel them we’ll fight we’ll win."

And he twirled afterwards his tin saber.

Good times those, and not hard


AMEBA

Quando più rissosi e loquaci

sono i compagni di casa

topi gatti

passeri perenni

penso a te ameba avventurosa

proteiforme in acque anche salmastre

abitatrice d’uomini e di bestie

che un giorno irraggiungibile astro

passasti nel mio cielo di vetro

muovendoti a scatti

allontanandoti come una mano che dice addio.

AMOEBA

When my live-in companions

are too quarrelsome and talkative

mice cats

the sparrows who're always with us

I think of you adventurous amoeba

protean even in salty water

inhabitant of men and beasts

who one day, unreachable star,

passed through my sky of glass

darting farther

and farther away like a hand waving goodbye.


OLIVE

Lustre matrone

piccole novizie con la faccia in ombra

puttanelle appuntite

vi spoglio del vostro

velo di cellulosa

segretissime polpe

trame sottili che dall’avana andate

al nero antracite

amiche con offerte fantasiose

quattro sensi portate

su piste di decollo

olive drupe fiale

d’essenze altamente volatili

olio in lunghezza larghezza spessore

olio carezzevole e concreto

timidi stormi boschivi

fughi frutti fondenti

rose in un soffio raggrinzite

affumicate

spiccioli d’un sole fumicoso

cibarie sparpagliate sopra i rami

ancora aeree

ancora aclorurate

alunne a volte d’un forte

acido oleico felicemente fenico

vene che passano

d’ottobre e novembre in posti caldi

chi nel vetro vi vede

accalcate malconce confuse

con finta salute

sapore di veleno

vorrebbe rifare il cammino

della scala a pioli

riportarvi ai rami

a una plurima sorte

al cielo dei vostri voli.

OLIVES*

Sleek matrons

small novices faces in shadow

sharp-faced little whores

I take off your veil

of cellulose

innermost flesh

fine tissue from light brown

to anthracite black

girlfriends with kinky ideas

four directions four-fold

capacity on the runways

stone-bearing olives phials

of a very volatile essence

oil in length, width, thickness

caressing and concrete oil

timid forest storms

mushrooms fruits chocolates

roses withered by a gust

smoked

what’s left of a smoky sun

snacks scattered on the branches

still up in the air

still de-chlorinated

students at times of a strong

oleic acid gaily carbolic

veins that pass October

and November in warm places

whoever sees you behind the glass

crowded badly dressed mixed together

with false health

and a poisonous taste

might want to go up

the ladder again

take you back to the branches

to a multiple fate

to the sky of your flights.

* As linguists have told us, certain mythologies and identifications arise from the gender of words. Fruit is feminine in

Italian; fruit trees masculine. Snails, bees, anchovies (and nations), larks and fieldmice are feminine; dormouse, hamster

and hermit crab are masculine,


API

Quelle api selvatiche

venute da ignote frontiere

che spesso vedi vibrare a capofitto

su gialle corolle

branco nato al di fuori

d’ogni ordine e legge

simile a fiori caparbi

che predilige e difende

– il miele che ne discende

è un indocile miele –

veementi sfrontate violatrici

di spazi riservati

a colonie modello

messaggere sono

e messaggio d’un forte qualcosa

splendente di protervia

che uova e larve comunque mette

nelle tasche dei Santi

e muore il giorno dei Morti.

BEES

Those wild bees

which you often see quivering head first

over yellow corollas

come from unknown frontiers

a swarm hatched outside

any law and order

like the stubborn flowers

they favor and defend

—the honey they engender

is an untamed honey—

vehement brazen violators

of spaces reserved

for model colonies

they are messengers

and message of a strong something

splendid with arrogance

yet they still place

eggs and larvae in the Saints' pockets

and die on All Souls’ Day.


From LA DISCESA AL TRONO/THE DESCENT TO THE THRONE (1975)

IL BUIO

In un’ora di grande luce

in una grande piazza lastricata

di pietra biancastra

il buio nasce come una fonte

una bestia un volatile una pianta

sparnazzante in silenzio

cessa allora ogni alito di vento

e puoi cadere in quei fili tesi

là in mezzo impigliarti

crollando in avanti

ad occhi spalancati verso il buio

sbattere la fronte.

THE DARK

At a time of great light

in a great square paved

with whitish stone

darkness rises like a fountain

an animal a bird a plant

scattering in silence

every breath of wind ceases then

and you could fall into those taut wires

get tangled right there in the middle

pitching forward

eyes wide open toward the dark

banging your forehead.


From MARZO E LE SUE IDI/MARCH AND ITS IDES (1977)

ROMBI

Come una trapunta

la pelle d’un tonno appena ucciso

m’apparve fitta di piccoli rombi

vidi così fin dove

da che profondo ordito

affiora una tenace geometria

quale strapiombo unisce

una coperta al tonno

l’aquilone ai quattro

lati della mia solitudine.

DIAMONDS

Like a quilt

the skin of a freshly killed tuna

looked thickly covered with small diamonds

I saw thus how far

from what deep web

a tenacious geometry works its way to the

[surface

what sheer drop unites

a bedspread to a tuna

a kite to the four

sides of my solitude.


From L’ALLODOLA OTTOBRINA/THE LARK OF OCTOBER (1979)

NIDI D’OMBRA

Linee aggrovigliate impolverati

garbugli nidi d’ombra

potesse il pettine sbrogliarvi

cardarvi

portarvi al sole

passando e ripassando su di voi

mettervi in azione

fruste schioccanti

reti gabbie rifugi

amori inesplicati

abili annodate conclusioni

sciolti e lunghi nell’aria

sferzanti

il passo lento del mondo.

THICKETS OF SHADE

Snarled lines dusty

tangles thickets of shade

if only a comb could

untangle card

bring you into the sun

running again and again through you

set you going

whips cracking

nets cages shelters

unexplained love affairs

nimble tightly-bound conclusions

loose and long in the air

lashing

the world’s slow pace.


CHI TI FERMA LE MANI

Chi ti ferma le mani

in un gesto di statua

chi ti gela il sorriso

ti sta dinnanzi invisibile

attraverso lui vedi

i colori del mondo

le trame della vita

te statua nel tumulto

sfiorata non scalfita.

THE ONE WHO STILLS YOUR HANDS

The one who stills your hands

in a gesture of statue

who freezes your smile

stands invisible before you

through him you see

the world’s colors

the web of life

you a statue in the tumult

grazed but not scraped.


LA PAGLIUZZA LA TRAVE

Fanno a gara le cose

per entrarti nell’occhio

la pagliuzza la trave

foreste di travi

pianure di paglia

ora schiavo del mondo accecante

procedi a tentoni fra tonfi e fruscii

la scure la falce diradano il mondo.

THE STRAW THE BEAM

Things vie with each other

to get into your eye

the straw the beam

forests of beams

plains of straw

now slave of the blinding world

you feel your Way in the thuds and rustlings

the axe the sickle thin out the world.


SIMMENTHAL

Con dolcezza impazzire al declino

di nostra vita

su questa proda di sopravvivenza

attingo al tascapane

e posso

dare i nomi più belli al bovino

muscolo rosso cotto nel suo brodo.

SIMMENTHAL**

To go sweetly mad at the decline

of our life

on this shore of survival

I dip into the back pack

and I can give

the finest names to the sublime

red beef muscle cooked in its broth.

* A brand of canned meat.


I FATTI

Qui qualcuno racconta

come avvennero i fatti

i terribili fatti

serrati in branco al galoppo

e il tuo volto sbianca

disfatto all’ascolto

ora l’eco è lontana

il tuo volto lontano

polveroso travolto

impigliato a uno zoccolo.

THOSE DEEDS

Here someone’s telling

how those deeds took place

those terrible deeds

a stampeding herd

and you blanch

face undone listening

now the echo is faraway

your face faraway

dusty knocked down

caught on a hoof.


ALLA MIA OMBRA

Qualcuno ti cancelli

a mia immagine e somiglianza

ombra scompagnata

che ora scivoli

vacillante sui muri

sperduta nelle stanze.

TO MY SHADOW

I hope someone will erase you

in my image and likeness

shadow without partner

still sliding

unsteady on the walls

lost through the rooms.


From CHIROMANZIA D’INVERNO/WINTER FORTUNE TELLING (1983)

PYRACANTHA

Pyracantha negletta

ora debole e vecchio mi rincuori

alle tue spine mi volgo

alle bacche scarlatte

che vista e sangue ravvivano

fugando il malocchio

so in quale schema

metterti a dimora

se già ci siamo intesi

stenderti in un lungo

ingenuo e forte sistema di difesa.

(1977)

PYRACANTHA

Neglected pyracantha

now that I’m weak and old you lift my spirits

I turn to your thorns

to your scarlet berries

that revive the sight and the blood

chasing away the evil eye.

I know in what plan

to set you out

laying you, if you know

what I mean, in a long

naive and strong defense system.


CHIROMANZIA D’INVERNO

L’inverno scacciò le zingare chiromanti

dal cancello dell’istituto dei tumori

chi entrava invece andava

al caldo

si spogliava

s’infilava a letto

si teneva ben stretto nell’ascella

il termometro

ingerita la pillola fidata

togliendole ridandole fiducia

mandava lontano i suo pensieri

(strade d’autunni estati primavere

d’altre ancora stagioni immaginate)

si guardava da sé

il palmo della mano.

(1978)

WINTER FORTUNE TELLING

Winter chased the gypsy fortune tellers

from the cancer institute gate

whoever entered though

went where it’s warm

stripped

slipped into bed

held the thermometer

tight under his arm

and taken his reliable pill

not counting then counting on it

sent his thoughts far away

(autumn summer spring roads

still other seasons of the imagination)

he read himself

the palm of his hand.


IN TE

In te in te confido

tutto ho rubato al mondo

sei il Cubo la Sfera il Centro

me ne sto tranquillo

tutto t’è stato ammonticchiato dentro.

Cimbro, 12 febbraio 1979

IN YOU

In you in you I trust

I have stolen everything from the world

you are the Cube the Sphere the Center

my mind is at ease

everything was stacked inside of you.


From SEGNI/SIGNES (1986)

PAGINA BIANCA

Ségnala

dàlle un connotato

spazio circondato d’altro spazio

stràppalo come foglia

all’immane foresta del non segnato.

BLANK PAGE

Mark it

give it a distinguishing characteristic

space surrounded by other space

tom like a leaf

from the monstrous forest of the unmarked.

WINTER FRAGMENTS - Bartolo Cattafi Official Website · WINTER FRAGMENTS SELECTED POEMS 1945 ... when they moved back to Barcellona. ... and also his wife, the journey that Cattafi

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