Pierluigi Cappello

From a ways, the sky and your hands come to my eyes, from some distant part of you; it’s snowing out, you’re all in the white of the snow every track in the candor a wound and the field beyond the window is a body a glance that becomes a pronouncement, the heat of breath, your head adrift in sleeplessness; that’s where it returns, in a word translated into silence where the sparrows tie loose knots your palms on your eyes, chest on your knees forehead in the snow. Translated from the Italian

My eyes turned to salt in looking back, my thoughts stood still in gestures, in the silence of what’s been done; I gathered the crumbs of another lunch and shook them into the garden’s vitreous air where the sun’s just cracked and spilled. Here, even a flutter of blackbird beyond the hedge stands still, as my words stand still, like ships in bottles. Your language is mine but mine is not yours. At home, I could feel myself thinking while the television glowed in shadow and a film score spread like smoke in a saloon. I keep to myself what it means to tend a fire, the thick scent of soaked wood, a match between my fingers, the way a day resides in what’s to do, in another light split by the clouds, a different sunset tied to the tallest trees flush in the eyes of houses, on the poor man’s livestock; a touch here, a touch there — the way loneliness comes, today, a day like this, one day more alone. Translated from the Italian