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I have a problem with : Accatolica, what is it? On Jan 29, 2008 7:15 PM, Frederick Pollack <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > In Rome > > > The caretaker of the Military Cemetery > across the Via Zabaglia > from the Accatolica, where Keats, Shelley, > Gramsci, etc. are buried, > can tell you interesting stories > if you buy him a few drinks > after his shift, or on a Sunday > when the heat is great and the traffic slightly subdued. > He says his charges have their moods. > Normally satisfied > with their well-watered lawn, the neat ranks of their graves, > the shade of the concrete hand with its broken sword, > they are uneasy when visited; > collectively upset by ancient wives, > unfamiliar sons and daughters, unknown grandkids. > It isn't that they're unfeeling, but their ideas > of comfort, presence, peace are not those > of the living. Their perceptions > are, we would say, blurred. The touring > schoolchildren who occasionally come > do not appear to them as bored for life, > slaves of themselves, but as polite, > lovely, attentive archetypes > who nonetheless hear nothing and feel > no ghostly caress. No more than a tree, > the caretaker says, do his friends > regard themselves as rooted and motionless; > and although these particular dead > are male, they see action, > rather as women do, as someone coming > to them. Perhaps the Gestapo officer > who shot so many of them, prisoners, > in the head. And perhaps he does come > from wherever he lies to the north, > reluctantly, in horror > of their illogical welcome, their forgetfulness > his torment. But they are haunted by the living, > as if by incipient earthquake; like the cats, > their familiars. He seems reluctant to say more, > the caretaker, and you ask him > if it's only the military dead > who stir thus. And he says > he has heard similar reports > from the staff across the street, where poets lie. > -- Anny Ballardini http://annyballardini.blogspot.com/ http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=poetshome http://www.moriapoetry.com/ebooks.html I Tell You: One must still have chaos in one to give birth to a dancing star!