Video

In Four

by Gianfranco Palmery

Italian

Poems from the book In quattro (In Four) by Gianfranco Palmery

Translation by Barbara Carle

I

The year, the hour, the cross, the hinges
of the world, everything is divided in four
parts—in space and time
we thus measure sacrifice and loss.

IV

I'm upon myself like a falcon
or a brooding buzzard on a trestle
laughable bird of prey resigned to mortification
in the gloomy ruffled plumage where he nestles.

XVIII

—Why an eternal mask, what hides
behind the need to hide oneself
behind a mask (the metal studded
style, the unravelled mythologies…)?

Look: behind the mask there is the back
of the mask, the hollow surface
of the cast, its intimate face
without face, a vacuous lack.

XXIV

Luminous and nocturnal, emulous moons
or stars that rise in pallor, run
resplendently through the arch
of their obedience and docilely extinguish

themselves once they reach the other hemisphere—
far away from we who remain and grow weary in the flesh:
poems are like this but their mystery is here
and it runs from the mind to the hand.

XXIX

As though between four walls or four boards—
in a room or a coffin: the quatrain
is the cell, the sepulcher, the lock up
—it is the measure of closure.

XXXV

Syllabize be alive: shudder of vertebrae—
paradigmatical voice of to verberate
make a din, suffer loss; dactylic feverling
which discharges to darkness perishing.

In Four web page