After my grandparents died their house was rented to people who skipped on the rent and soiled the house in every way possible. That day, when my mom and dad and uncles and aunts opened the door, they were all crying. Even then, a boy, I understood somehow all our memories had been desecrated, and I cried, seeing them cry. We burned everything that day. The fire blazed into the night. The house was stripped. My grandparents had a small, well kept, farmhouse with a lush piece of property complete with gardens, grape arbors and fruit trees. Sometimes late at night a plum would drop from a plum tree and plop into a rain barrel, like a clock that measured endless time, for me now, in teardrops.
On the Road to Poetry
An hour lost is three in subconscious evolving.
Therefore, be on the road to poetry.
It’s a green road that seeds the shadows.
It’s woodlots and meadows
Pronounce the first syllables of music.
It’s abandoned farmhouses
That enter the house of your mind,
The crossroads that make you an artist.
Therefore, be on the road to poetry.
Drive the river road, flooding time.
Eventually the fences break down.
A landscape become its own poem.
Having memorized everything you saw,
A line writes itself, and lives on the wind.
How will the Lonely Die
And how will the lonely die
And those who are afraid
And those who break the law
And those sick among strangers
And those who come out of their houses
And those who die in their homes
And those on the street
Those who rely on others
And how will the lonely die
How will the distressed die
How will those praying die
With their guardian angels sick
How will the anxious die
How will the impoverished die
How will the hopeless die
How will freedom die
More Translations from the Sicilian of Hugo Falcundus
“These African winds cover everything in gold dust. At the same time they open blue clearings, domes, and other dream forms of the Sicilian landscape.”
“Control is maintained with the acquiescence of the people.”
“The sound of the sea doesn’t know the difference between palace windows and gypsy tents.”
“What I love most about abandoned fountains is how the ferns imprint the water
with their presence.”
“I hate the monks and their catacombs.”
“How loudly deceit whispers.”
The King is impressed with himself so often, he could be his own jester.”
“What will remain of Italy? The Kingdom of Sicily.”
“One certain way to know an enemy is to invite conversation.”
Pandemic 2020
Seems everyone is paranoid,
With more and more cases of Covid
Appearing in the news
Like worry with a fuse.
After all the panic buying
Hoarders must be inside dying,
Grave as any virus
Fear replicates like a virus.
But with the elderly at risk
Won’t wisdom grow sick?
And with our sick in danger
Mercy show itself a stranger?
Enumeration can create the feel
That anything is hyperreal.
You couldn’t proclaim a pandemic
Were not death endemic.
Something other than disease
Blows in forests of sick trees.
When these clouds part
Will the sun be at its start?
The Wind Shifts Like This
The Wind Shifts Like This
Warm winds billow white sheets
In the summer sleep of childhood.
The green rustles like shoreline trees.
All the hours are filled with fruit
And the fruit ripens like the light.
Tied to stakes in the ground
The garden regenerates its dreams.
We walk through white sheets
And see our beautiful mothers
On the other side of space.
We walk back through sheets
Leaving the forms in place.
Love is childhood’s point of sail.
Each sheet is a cloud capture.
Each moment is a sunrise.
