On Sun, 13 Jan 2002 22:26:35 +0100, Maria Theresa Ib <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:

>Is this from your collection? Or a recent
>dark vision? That's what bumping your head will do for you. Hope you're
>feeling better.

>Tess.


Dear Maria Theresa,

thank you for the help and compliments. The first is very precious, being
those versions that I post to the list nothing more than attempts at self-
translating my Italian poems. I am aware I cannot render in English what
originally was  born in my own language, but it is just a way at
communicating my incommunicative poems (so, this can also respond to Dom's
quest whether poem should or not aim at communicativeness: I myself think,
no, they shouldn't, but in my role as a translator, yes, I think one could
set that task in front of one’s page, for the sake of cultural
interactions solely, not at all to bring forth the ego  of a given author,
since that would be utterly impossible, in my view: since, I believe,
poetry require trans-individualities, beyond names and identities. Most
beautiful quote from Hugo is the following: "Do not ask the name of the
person who seeks a bed for the night. He who is reluctant to give his name
is the one who most needs shelter."
in Les Misérables, pt. 1, bk. 1, ch. 6 (1862).)


I appreciate the amendments that I will immediately apply to my
poem "Disease" (I wrote it for both personal reasons of being dis-
heartened but also to express an aesthetic, of course"). I am feeling
better. But I feel people - in daily social relationships – do not
generally wish each other well, and this is really something that causes
me lots of discomfort.

Thank you also for the reference to Plath, although, in my poem the
occasion is rarely as personal as in her poems, but rather represent
surreal constructions, (in this case , an  imagined car accident , which
is always in my theme of the Macchina as Machine, Engine, Trap, and so on,
for the Being, for Language, for Health, for Production, for Disaster…The
last two poems I wrote are, in fact, two fantasized car-accidents where in
the first one I am the “survived” victim and in the second is an unknown
(also “survived”) motorcyclist we had run over (this time in a dream) and
who got stuck under the belly of the car (I did not write what I did in
the dream, but when I found out the motorcyclist had remained stuck under
the belly of the car, with  my both hands and  all by myself , I lifted
the car (a Ford Granata Ghia, huge) as though I were Victor Hugo ‘s
character in the Miserable, Jean Valjean.

So, this is the poem you helped me changing, followed by the second that
an Oxford poet helped me amending. Thank you to both of you, really:



Disease

The ultimate scenario. The nurse whitely approaches my bed.
She scrutinizes my several wounds. For instance,
the one on my left wrist. The darkened  rivulet which
once flowed through my veins towards the valley of the heart.
The world, my advocate, the world
is mud. And so is the rest.
Also from here, her garments appear quite erotic,
(even) from this severe threshold.
And I, in my thinning membranes, my thickening thoughts,
(or if you want, my insanities)
I firmly see the world as a malaise,
a disease no cure has yet been found for.

Oxford, 11.1.2002



Malattia


Estremo scenario. L' infermiera biancamente s’avvicina al mio letto.
Scrutina le mie varie ferite. Per esempio,
quella sul mio polso sinistro. Il ruscelletto raggrumito
che un tempo fluiva lungo le mie vene verso la valle del cuore.
Il mondo, cara benefattrice, il mondo
è fango. E così il resto.
Anche da qui, i suoi vestimenti sembrano sexy,
(perfino)da questa severa soglia.
Ed io, nelle mie membrane assottigliate, nei mie pensieri di traliccio
( o se si vuole, nelle mie follie)  ben vedo il mondo come morbo,
malattia, di cui non esiste ancora terapia.


The Poet's subconscious

Suggestions come to life this way and most of all my blood's ink
- pre-expressionistic treasure, the soul's deep box of solitude.

My fever still masking the hypocrisy of the times.
Yet I always seize some elements,
which I will seed in the dream

of a white aphonic image,
where you and I are looking under the car’s belly
for the inert body of the motorcyclist we've ran over.
Or,  the illogical guarantor, the chained word of normality.

So in that coarse chunk of events, showing plagues and wounds,
the bruised identity set near the purulent lesion on the ribs,
I see the impossible assuming the shape and features of denial.

 In the sleep, the identifying data of a singular destiny collapse
and, of conscience, on my  thoughts I exercise but a transversal glance
from which arise a phrase, a rumble, a desire.

Ah, impulse, gray malaise,
lugubrious runt of analogical ideas. The easiness
with which, in my speech,
an image translates itself in a box,
a fish-eye lens that pulses, a camera.


Erminia Passannanti, Oxford , 12. 1. 2002


L' inconscio del Poeta     ©Erminia Pass anna nti


Nascono così le suggestioni e soprattutto la tinta brunita del mio sangue -

tesoro pre-espressionistico, scatola di solitudine dell'anima fonda.

La mia febbre ancora mascherante l’ipocrisia del tempo.
Da sempre afferro un qualche  elemento,
lo incisto nel sogno

in un'immagine afona e bianca
dove io e te cerchiamo sotto il ventre della macchina
il corpo inerte del motociclista che abbiamo investito,
o l'illogica parola garante, la svincolata catena della normalità.

Così in quel turpe ingorgo narrativo d' eventi, mostrando piaghe e ferite,
l’identità contusa presso l’infetta lesione sul costato,
vedo l' impossibile prendere forma e assumere il volto d' un diniego.

Nel sonno, vengono meno i dati anagrafici d'un singolare destino
e, della coscienza, sui pensieri io non esercito che il mio sguardo schivo
da cui si libra in alto lieve un verso, rantolo,  desiderio.

Ah, pulsione, malessere grigio,
gorgoglio tetro dell'idea analogica. La faciltà
con cui,  nel mio linguaggio,
si traduce l'immagine in scatola, fish-eye che pulsa, camera.


Poesie e autotraduzioni©Erminia Passannanti.