Austrians Here are stricter than the Bourbons
The Austrian, of true Aryan stock, is very strict, does not charm,
achtung kaputt kameraden, demands maximum flexibility
so as to put the whole of Europe back in the 90,
bombs the Milan stock exchanges absolutely free,
better than Radetzky or Bava Beccaris did.
We could try again with a tobacco strike,
mixing hashish with marijuana with detachment,
although I don’t think the lotto strike would work,
we are too far removed from the uprisings of 1848,
now the whole nation is pulling to get to the morning,
dreaming of cashing a pair or a five of a kind.
Hoping for a return of the Bourbon dynasty.
the Milanese are not accustomed to revolution,
pawing, clamoring, shitting you off,
returning the next day to the office to work,
not having the energy of the good-tempered Sicilians,
the only special-status region to protest with pitchforks.
Here the Austrians are stricter than the Bourbons,
Merkel thunders from Brussels threatening resolutions
of the European Council, in which sit supranationally paid
the various front men of one or another multinational corporation,
undecided, with all-Teutonic scientific rigor,
whether to bankrupt Greece or a farm in Valcamonica.
Born Backwards
Why do I keep writing?
B., like Bangladesh, was
sixteen years old, on the windowsill
of the balcony of a Milanese high school,
but sixteen years was not enough
For God to embrace her in his leap.
R., as Romania, was
thirteen years old, feeling a hundred,
and no angel
was flying by her side.
E., as Ecuador, was
thirteen years old, with no Genoa
reminded her of Quito,
in the solitude of her dress
off-brand, disintegrated.
C., like China, was
twelve years old, worn out quickly,
looking out on a balcony
with the desire not to see the world,
throwing herself into the vortex
of performance anxiety.
Their names are not difficult
to forget, they are names
– like me-born in reverse,
pressed against the glass
of the windows of life
jumping from the asphalt.
The Forgotten Children’s Paradise
Forgotten children’s paradise,
there play dead children asleep
in hot cars, without relief,
victims of mnemonic crises from work fatigue
that make them forget budgets, meetings or certificates.
Little girls play in a relentless summer,
indifferent to the sun that has dehydrated them,
free to soar in tides of air
in spite of the bad moments spent in respiratory crisis,
without having to feel heat and thirst.
Forgotten children’s paradise,
dead children asleep play there
strangled by the insecurity of belts,
eagerly waiting to re-embrace, without rancour,
those who murdered them.
The Disease Invective
To discover the causes of my dysenteric experience at every event,
they poured ink, a huge mistake, into the cannula of the gastroscope,
the medical pathologists, and diagnosed me with invective disease,
associated with literary reflux, surging down my oesophagus and oxidising my gums.
When, as a cynical dog with a collar, sniffing out the smell of bad morals or the stench of egopathy,
I can’t tolerate the other-worlder, a victim of excessive xenophobia,
I forget all forms of fair play, sink into the fog of the Berserker,
furious and black as a Zulu forced to put up with an Afrikaner,
speak Roma to Sinti, Sinti to Gypsy, Gypsy to Romanian, Romanian to Roma
and I can’t stop myself shouting Hitler Aleikhem Shalom.
If I don’t digest you, I’ll hear ‘hou, hou, hou’, like Leonidas at Thermopylae,
identifying the worms encircling me, hence the rise in my eosinophils,
I emit excessive hydrochloric acid and stop disinhibiting the proton pump
with the despair of Mazinger rejected by the bionic woman,
spitting hectolitres of cyanide in my face with the skill of Naja nigricollis
and it annoys me to be condemned to do anything.
To understand the ethos of my life in need of ataraxia,
the barbarian meets the citizen in the chôra of anti-‘poetry’,
all of you, no one excluded, will be forced to venture as a group
in the labyrinthine meanderings of my invective.
Carmina Non Dant Damen
The story of a coin is of no interest to anyone
two sides never so bold to see each other face to face
on one side imprinted the effigy of a queen,
austere, draped in silks and thirsty of drapery,
on the other the image of a minstrel, clad in a mantle of earth,
surrounded by the golden sadness of war songs.
The enchantment of love turns into coin
two hands, arranged one with care and other artisanship,
shake hands, and two faces, two metic eyes
protrude from the copper reliefs,
keeping alive, embraced, suspended in the void,
the one observing the amenity of a realm
where rivers run free, flowers smile,
clothed in forests and fruit forever,
the other gazing into hell.
My art is powerless
to cast spells so influential
to keep two faces timelessly suspended in the void,
mixing in forge the two worlds
into a single world where minstrel
and austere queen harmonise thoroughly.
Minstrel, continue to sing
your useless song with a broken heart,
waiting for fragments of tears
to flow again
in the blood of a halved love.
To read more poems by the same author click here
About the Author
Ivan Pozzoni was born in Monza in 1976. He introduced Law and Literature in Italy and has published essays on Italian philosophers and on the ethics and juridical theory of the ancient world. He was the founder and director of the literary magazine Il Guastatore – «neon»-avant-garde notebooks; he was the founder and director of the literary magazine L’Arrivista. He is included in the Atlas of contemporary Italian poets of the University of Bologne and figures à plusieurs reprized in the great international literature review of Gradiva. His verses are translated into 25 languages.
