Passenger ships slip time in fog,
Their displacement forever in motion.
At Ellis Island multitudes materialize
In sackcloth and ashes.
As they pass, our ancestors
Smile at us in pity and in wonder.
More Translations from the Latin Fragments of Hugo Falcandus
In the Arab gardens of Sicily water guides you to paradise and order to hypocrisy.
Only in this sun can you weigh the shadow of a pomegranate to the ripeness within.
The Christian mosaics are the skies inside Palermo. Once there was a miracle. An evil monk was struck in the head and killed by a small piece of heaven.
Why are there so many miserable old men holding on to poetic reputations?
As for my own poems, they will return to the earth…
A King risks assassination if he doesn’t, in some instances, allow himself to appear easily persuaded.
Deeds should be the leaves of a beautiful world and words the fruits of a life worth living.
Some Lost Writings of Hugo Falcandus
Poets are interested in events “que circa curiam gesta sunt,” meaning they are concerned only with what happens in the court and among the elite.
When the tyrant Kings of Sicily wanted to vent their rage, they had poets executed, beginning with the most celebrated. This was to the credit of the Kings.
It’s true that poets suffer “Theutonicus furor,” which is the pillaging of their sensibilities through other styles.
Poets who are miserly at giving praise are generally gluttonous about receiving it.
A poem is a golden honeycomb.
The critic is he whose “culus tibi purior salillo est/ whose ass is purer than a saltcellar… (The rest has been lost).
The only way to be a poet is to kick poetry to death (or “to kick a poet to death.”) The original text has been destroyed).
Poets who publish other poets have a sense of entitlement.
It was said that at the court of William the Wicked, a Muslim poet read poetry of such beauty and depth that all eyes glistened with tears, though not a word of praise was spoken.
Haircut and Shave
When a man in a hospital bed
Needs a haircut and shave,
The barber with his black bag
Goes humbly through the wards.
In shadow and in light,
The barber and his patient,
Seen through an open door,
A smile on the sick man’s face.
The Barber has No Place to Cry
Cutting hair at the nursing home,
My father was afraid of growing old.
The old have so few hairs
And to shave a lonely face can break your heart:
You never shave the same face twice.
Alone and sick, sickness a blessing,
There were some old people, my father said,
No one ever visited, only the barber.
Barbers
The child I was sits trembling in a barber chair.
‘Make me a barber, ‘ I asked my father,
Barbers are men who smell like rose water,
Who gather sea foam in their hands.
In my family, scissors fly like swallows,
Straight razors never bleed.
Now mirrors have tears in their eyes,
Combs and brushes are buried in coffins.
My father is inside a mirror,
Walking in his white salon shirt,
Carrying his sad combs and scissors
Along an endless seashore
Arab Woman
I saw a young Arab woman,
A spring wind was blowing her pale blue burqa
So that her body rippled through it like water
And the veil made her face appear.
Covered, she was transparent,
Diaphanous wavering reflection of blue iris,
Seashell in a glass pitcher,
Flower emerging from the sword,
Naked light under a lampshade.
Gracefully, her every step disrobed her,
Like a shadow on a mirror,
A palm leaf swaying at a window
Where sheer curtains are blowing.
In a Gallery of Birds
The mind is brushed by sparrow wings.
Hart Crane
All shadows of a kind cross the atlas of the mind.
Alone or with fledglings in realistic settings
The ghosts of those birds migrated into words.
The longer we stayed the sound of a glade.
Windows doubled as skies for eternity in their eyes.
Even for a feather it is a heavy tether.
In each nest eggs at rest.
Such stillness grows like flight in repose
Mounted there in flying air.
What is seeming if nature is dreaming?
What is death to a hummingbird’s breath?
In an eagle’s gaze soar endless days.
A glass case sings it breaks with wings.
All field marks fade light goes into shade.
In the Beauty of a Lower Heaven
Autumn in Paris is like summer in a lower heaven.
Sycamores and chestnuts paint the air,
Pencil-thin branches sketch the city like Utrillo,
The Seine sets leaves in moon-glass.
We caught the metro at Bir-Hakeim
Near Vel’ d’Hiv, the Nazi detention center.
Cyclists went flying into fire and ash
In the beauty of a lower heaven.
Something grotesque in the accordion
Like a fascist playing Mozart.
Something hypnotic in the sound,
The bellowing of giving birth to terror.
In the beauty of a lower heaven
All the people are lovelier, tranquil,
Even at rush hour music tames
The writhing beast of megalopolis.
Goodnight Paris, bonne nuit,
Your accordions are like history
Repeating the music and the horror
In the beauty of a lower heaven.
Goodnight Roseline, Simone and Eliana…
We will meet again, Aviva…
The doors of the trains are opening
In the beauty of a lower heaven.
Ice Music
St. Lawrence River
1
The rivers of the river were moving again.
The shattered ice glided
In one giant flow of crystal shards.
A concert, a symphony of treble sounds,
Frozen keys of light and music
Glittered all along the seaward shore.
2
Was it the beginning of time?
Or had the end of time begun?
The earth was locked in ice.
Darkness was upon the land.
When sunlight filtered
Through the poison gases
It struck the ice and multiplied.
The light looked through itself,
Dissolving, congealing,
Until the air had cleared.
Light took the shape of a fern
And ferns unfurled out of nothing.
Light moved and there was wind.
Light poured over its rim
And from ice water trickled.
When light was exhausted
The night was born.
3
Those who live by the river
Have heard the sound of light
In that staccato of shattered ice;
In the sharp tintinnabulous
Wavering myriad of chimes,
They have heard the cold
Remote music of a crystal age.
Salvatore Ala 