****

Restored Frescoes on a Stucco Wall

The florid corpse of a man in the prime of his life

floated to the top of the white water

while iridal algae shocked the ripples of brine,

reflecting the sun’s decisive breeze

and absorbing, from below, the crystallized ceramic dust.

Hovering, the naked eye could detect

slowly but simply, forms of continents developing depth,

buoying to the surface, trembling over exploding air,

sailing upwards, taking hold, forming

the brown mottled figure of a man:

earthen fronds caressed by faded frescoes,

remains of our graphic past.

Save Some Tripe for Me   (Variation One)

Liver pâté for the gastric malignancy remains the sole antidote for the absorptive surface area of the diseased bagpipes of our band.  When cleaned of all the mucus, blood and bile, that surface area is one skin, one continuous and flexible membrane, cradling and caressing the air as it blurts out the shattering cry of goats returning early from the pasture.  Remember: Even an ulcerated and scarred membrane belts out the same quality of sound.  It may not work as a conduit of food, but it need not be disposed of to rot in the toilet. 

Secrets from Within an Instrument   (Variation Two)

No reed of grass, nor delicate clover was an antidote for the gastric malignancy within the diseased innards of the bagpipes when they were alive.  Yet when removed from the animal, cleaned of all mucus, blood and bile, those innards proved to be one skin, one continuous and flexible membrane, cradling and caressing the air as it blurted the shattered cry of goats returning early from the pasture.  When we played them, forcefully compressing each puff of air, we could not know that hidden from sight, deep inside, were hundreds of pasty creases branded with ulcerations.  We were simply pleased with the sound of a melody unscathed by death.  

Excellent Fireworks

Comfort opened the tunnel of the hill

with deep-set windows overlooking the meadows beyond.

Nothing was unexpected of the half-our-height.

Large stupid folk may have thought them absurd,

but they did have one grand adventure,

while growing up in this luxurious hole.

One morning a woolly-toed friend

neatly brushed his fur,

and wrapped his silver scarf

under long bushy eyebrows.

Out of doors, he piped his tobacco

in beautiful smoky rings

and ‘good-morninged’ a passer-by

who declined a part in his adventure.

Dreaming of a magic diamond

he remembered the unexpected luck of widows’ sons

and huffed and puffed till his wooden pipe

made excellent fireworks,

going up like lilies and snapdragons in the twilight.

The Nose Knows

A young man on the committee had long responded only ‘no’.  Not because of any negative reason, nor for a need to oppose, but for a necessity neither he nor his physician anticipated. It was the sensation in his palate, a vibration in his nasal passage, an exhilaration of the sound inside the frontal part of the brain.  From this obsession of sound, he developed a compulsion for repeating only notions that would stimulate his nasal narcoticism which – as it turned out – were only notions of negativity.  The possibilities were endless: not quite, not really, I don’t think so, nix it.  Each one affording him a chance to repeat the spine-tingling sound.  Never had a human before become addicted to the feeling of a word inside his body. Never until this young man.  But his nonstop negative responses landed him unemployed and in the services of a shrink, who aimed to free the young man from his negative jargon.  One morning, to the shrink’s question of whether he felt his obsession was waning, the young man responded surprisingly I don’t know, making the shrink content and his nose doubly manic. 

A Lady Beyond Entombment

She was a woman who spent her days and her nights 

Calming the fires just outside her house.

She was a woman who bled from holes in her hands 

Where leaded apples had fallen straight through.

Alone, she’d pick each one up, between bloodied thumbs

Red on red, resting them all 

In a bucket she’d set quietly at the edge of the musty porch.

She was a woman who’d wash her long, gray hair 

Between the rocks of the swelling riverbed 

And shine her wet, silver threads 

On the gravelly road leading up to her house.

Lying on the walkway’s pointed stones 

Her hair pulled up long above her head

She was a metal spike

Blinding the sun with her crown of untarnished sterling.

Lifting up from the rocks that had punctured her leathered back, 

She felt no pain

For she was a woman who outlasted the rest.

Yet her gnarled hair rolled up into balls 

From the lonely wind encircling her house 

And her glorious crown dulled 

Like rusty rollers on an old hag.

Weathered, whipped and ragged

Never dismissed, anything but invisible

She owned her part of the air, savoring each exploding breath

As it plummeted deep down inside

The cold walls 

Entombing the woman she had been.  

Amelia Moser (PhD Harvard University), an American and Italian translator and interpreter, has taught Italian language and literature at Harvard, Yale, Bard, Columbia and Iona College, and is currently Chief Managing Editor of Italian Poetry Review (The Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America, Columbia University, Fordham University, Centro Studi Sara Valesio, Università degli Studi di Firenze). She has published on Italian Magical Realism, Anna Maria Ortese and Massimo Bontempelli, and her work focuses on fantastic fiction, evil in literature, the relation between music and literature, and poetry translation. She has translated Francesco Cavalli’s Baroque opera Ercole amante for the Boston Early Music Festival and has published translations of poems by Anna Maria Ortese and Fernanda Romagnoli. She is completing a collection of poems entitled Pipedreams.