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37
the sketch in a revue, a catchphrase.
I am here, not anywhere else: a glance,
the ten-millionth interval
of longitude between the parallels,
the gap between cobblestones,
the space between stretched out ribs,
a broken cage (what animal was it before?
you can’t tell the remains calcined
from porphyry pavement cemented with tarmac).
If even the cage of the meridians
crumbles and they are in freefall,
in this jerky, oblique movement,
let years come and go, darkly,
a quiet tide brushing the earth:
we will go to the grave, we will
go down the whirl well-seasoned in flavours,
artificial and natural yeasts,
tanned by acids and blows,
carefully eviscerated and hollowed out.
Do you remember every step after
the end of some job interview,
their colour, the aged evening,
you, aged too and taken farther away?
Not really away, always going back home,
and this, my bitter spending time
recants at every step and, in the end, laughs at it
in the courtyards of Bologna.