Washington, D.C.
Marble is sticking to wet leaves,
Walls are dripping from ivy,
Pillars drift and become as trees,
Wide rivers of reflected light drown the streets,
The earth rises and the city is less real,
Monuments and memorials
Cling lightly to the air.
Behind the Greek facade
A sea, as in the pages of Homer,
A sea within words,
Within windows and walls.
Our reflections on the glass
Of a transparency
Between extinction and captivity.
When you never leave the place
Where you were born,
You are more like a tree than a person.
An old person, an old tree,
With roots deep under the city.
And when you’re with others
Who talk of exotic lands,
You remain silent,
Feeling the strong winds of fate
Moving through your crown of leaves,
From every direction
Space entering your branches.
And they who are speaking
Become more and more distant,
The voices of birds
Departing for southern skies.
Halcyon mornings can save a marriage,
The glittering lake is level to the bright land,
Blue is suffused with the stillness of sand
As we breathe air from another realm
And our senses waken unaware.
Even in distraction and despair
We are spellbound by the silence,
Inundated by a placid flood of heat and light,
Permeated by quiescence,
The children playing, as in a lakeside painting,
Pacified by a powerful calm.
All is quiet in us, our vows unvoiced,
Arguments overwhelmed and soundless as the shore,
Lulled by tranquilized hours
Far from chaos and confrontation,
Healed in respite of all turbulence and storms.
My childhood was a sea voyage,
A barbershop and the ringing of a mandolin,
Summer stars through grape leaves,
Prickly pears and fig trees,
Snails creeping out of straw baskets,
Silence and violence.
My childhood was like a stuffed baby alligator
That swims in the swamp of memory,
Twice haunted twin sisters
Who survived a plane crash,
Playing cards scattered on a table,
Voices shoveling graves.
My childhood was a broken accordion,
A wine-press pressing the sun,
Chinese faces at the market,
Hunting rifles behind glass,
Dried eel at the fish store,
Rain of motherless time.
Nothing but roses,
Nothing but kisses of red wine and roses
For a distant relative on a ship’s Manifest.
We’ll meet at the port when I depart.
A rose tattoo for your soul,
Bouquets of foaming waves.
Rose per Rosa, o comprato stasera…
Roses covering the deck of the Sicilian Prince
And roses in America.
Maria Juana,
With you I strum a green guitar.
Maria Juana,
With you I know the sound of laughter.
Maria Juana,
With you I celebrate friendship.
Maria Juana,
With you I know the body is smoke.
Maria Juana,
With you I breathe another air.
Maria Juana,
With you I dance to naked music.
Maria Juana,
With you I live a waking dream.
Maria Juana,
With you there is no lying.
Maria Juana,
With you I raise children of peace.
Maria Juana,
With you I count the sands and stars.
Maria Juana,
With you I am everywhere at once.
Maria Juana,
With you I love beyond the grave.
Maria Juana,
With you I grasp all things.
Maria Juana,
With you I am born again.
Maria Juana,
With you I weave this ancient song.
Maria Juana,
With you I am entwined.
My daughter sees a hawk feather on the road.
Just as I pick it up the wind picks up the face of the leaves.
Just as I raise it to the air the trees begin sharing ancestral words.
Just as I pass it to my daughter she’s falling from the upper world.
Just as she takes it from my hand I am falling.
Just as she offers it back to her father she is falling.
Such things are found on the road joining young and old.
Such things happen on the spirit road.
At the shadow line the storm’s grip is loosed,
Between a sea of light and a sea of darkness
It is beautiful and hallowed on both sides.
Rain falls from the sun and clouds glow.
Winds blow in place and yet we are moving
As though at the equinox of eternity.
At the shadow line is the peace of mountains.
At the shadow line it is the birthday of forever,
It is the anniversary of fire and night,
Sparks fly from the anvil
But the hammer sounds in the distance.
Last night I dreamt I was talking to Wittgenstein. It was a frightening dream, hyperreal; and later I thought, not only relevant but important to share. I was wearing a blood soaked apron, as apparently we were both doctors in a First World War field hospital somewhere near the front. I marveled at his remarkable sangfroid under fire. I was about to make the first incision into my patient when I saw that it was a young boar and then a fatted calf. “Truth is truth enough for a grain of sand to keep the earth from falling,” he said, while amputating the right arm of his own brother.
Salvatore Ala 