Staying

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