I am sorry, this message was meant to go backchannel. I have no idea how
diverted its route and went on-line, after two days.
Instead I am posting a poem that I am taking to our Backroom Poets workshop
in Oxford, tonight.
“Eurydice”
I am neurosis I am the victim I am the merciless experience
the soul of the damned one the memory that leads a man to drag
His dog along or drag me down to a life journey the length of footsteps
Leaving no other testimony on a sand of seagulls’ shadows
than their meandering trace for a golden languor lasting
the wink of the eyelashes or for roses that open
In the long waiting of an entire generation of seeds .
The individual remaining alive, the one man’s obscure desire
I am ecstasy the number of voices of differing narratives
the penetration of a single fragment the size of Adam’s pupil
an example followed by nobody the outcast the criminal
a way of life spent in cheerful solitude watching the sea line
pervaded by the sense of an ending the spiritual collapse
the black ellipse of an architectural insignificance.
In a rough measure of irony and tragedy
I am the one who has dealt with a character adrift in a world of no bearings
the three complaining spirits possessing my family the implication being
a female body standing hand in hand with her daughter and her mother
a threat posed on the external existence of our counterparts
in the ancestral home made of old men strong land owners.
(10.07.2001)
Erminia Passannanti
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