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.

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

The Composition of the Text

1
an adjective breathing the window open
the insertion’s exact dimension in the rustling of pages
or see maybe how the text uses the body
see how the work is cosmic and biological and logical
in nocturnal voices in auroral explosions
in the croaking scratching scraping setting fire
here under the soft sky sticking all over the fingers
words that speak

2
he turns to the night cries out to it from the window
to slow down or existence is the circle is the space
is rhythmic swinging harpoon that brushes the lips
bronze gestures darkroom a stain left by the water
framed frozen hypocritical f

Adriano Spatola

2008

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

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

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