Secret Last Year (A Calendar Twelve-tone) [4. April, maybe]

Adriano Spatola

The sun is made of many mysterious concepts
cowardly resentments with listless rotation
they say they don't say but they demand attention
something rotten a little enlarged or rosy
a slight lividness applied to our pettiness
with light brush strokes exhausted by the heat
I speak of the heat that spoils and enthuses
of this black and magic heat that doesn't survive
innocuously childish to the organism's purpose
softened by the veritable verities drawing near
in April which is the fourth month of the year

From The Position of Things: Collected Poems 1961-1992 by Adriano Spatola, translated by Paul Vangelisti. Copyright © 2008 by Adriano Spatola and Paul Vangelisti. Used by permission of Green Integer Press.

Majakovskiiiiiiij

		for Julien & Giulia

(exordium)

this extreme dissolution systematically carried
to the limts of violence and up to the land of fire
up to the stagnant agitation in the rendering of rhythm
to the catastrophes of organisms in casual circumstances
inside the phagocytic cities in bodies encrusted with salt
under a bruised moon rolling across the pool table



(narratio)

with some enthusiasm but already flexible enough to confirm
everything to confirm her who loves insistently
that vegetates ramified in the pneumatic void of her story
the tactile prognosis the exc

Adriano Spatola

2008

The Abolition of Reality [Georges Seurat]

Georges Seurat
Sunday Afternoon on the Island 
of Grande Jatte (1884-85)


The wonder the sense of lacquered objects
bolted measured tricked out in the clock
generous happy mature penance shadow
that the sun disbanded sews on the leaves
trousers hair parasols and gowns and gloves
anger drowns sighing the groan resounds
against the decorated and blank wall against the scale
unraveled dry whirlpool enameled Gongorism
congenital with thirst with gloomy astonishment
or wonder or the sense of lacquered objects.

Adriano Spatola

2008

Alamogordo 1945

1
in my father's tomb the gods have been buried for millennia
in Crete Mycenae Mexico or Babylon
and your task, young ephebe, is radically changed
we're not talking about singing in chorus by the light of the moon
nor pretending to the warmth of a bonfire shepherding a metallic herd
we're talking about carefully observing and staying ready
because from one moment to the next our father's tomb will break open
and one shadow will move over the earth with the force of the lord
who first made it possible
who will destroy it in an embrace

2
the wound inflicted on the earth slowly heals
the

Adriano Spatola

2008

Poems

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Secret Last Year (A Calendar Twelve-tone) [4. April, maybe]

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