Davide Trame

‘68

Remember that day in the park,

in the tall grass, hand in hand,

our story had just started.

It was the time when we needed

to assess people and things,

underline in our sky our sympathies;

remember, behind us that tall young man

came, solitary, silent, with a smiling

beam in his eye that was his way

to greet you, in the distance.

He came with a book in his hand

and lay down in the grass, leaning

on his elbows, reading, relaxed.

-A great guy that one –you said to me,

-famous at school, he never does,

never, what the teachers ask him,

they say he actually laughs at them

and one day, during a lesson

he just stepped onto the window-sill,

hauled himself up and climbed to the roof-.

I saw the slender figure with that smile

lingering on the sloping tiles

in a world far off that I wanted

to be my own.

We were silent for a while, mutually

acknowledging the bright red air

of righteousness, the crazy

wisdom of walking away

on the roofs of life.

I am a teacher now and I am lucky:

no student in my class has ever stepped

onto the window-sill to climb away.

If one did that I would be lost.

Looking at me from the roof

hewould catch a spark in my eyes

and never come down,

he would just laugh and look upwards.

THEREAFTER

A long walk on the way back,

downhill, after the glare of sun and snow

on the top, the heat of the sun

we loved at once and did not fear,

the heat in the chest at noon

in the stark steel blue.

A long walk back after resting

on the top, where a snow block

crashed from the hut roof at our feet

leaving just a new

silence in the sun’s heat

filled later only by our steps,

precarious on the crests and cracks in the snow of the path

and the stones and sticks and mulch

going downhill, witnessing

unevenness and lastingness

in the earth’s will.

A staggering walk

on the way back downhill,

cheeks still flushed

from the heat of the sun, in the air

that has made us drunk.

Slow steps, imperfect

like the myriads

of jerks and shifts and touches of the days.

The dogs run and play

downhill, part of the scattering

stones and sticks, they let

themselves roll, teeth at one

with any windfall.

And a big sun-bleached stick keeps

falling and rolling on with us,

picked up and grasped by stubborn jaws

as if it wanted to become a token of a sort,

what we in our tiredness happen to gaze at

while it drops at our ankles, or we sense it

tumbling behind our heels, while we walk

on the long threads of land above

the thereafter of the plain,

a sun-bleached stick, honed

by air, saliva and teeth,

with this mouth at our side carrying it-

and a pair of brown eyes

and a wagging tail.

A token of a sort

that will rattle

in the ravines of memory.

EARLY EARTH

You say it’s the new lemon tree

spreading this sweet breath

but for me it’s something else, a locust tree,

its blossoms travelling maybe

with that ready scent of memories,

the season gathering its own solace,

air in its mirror of marvels.

Now it’s early morning

and I’m lacing up my boots for the hike,

the garden green stares at me,

at my hands and head bent forward

before anything: the sun that will grow

on the back of the neck with

a scrutinizing vastness,

the afternoon storm

that will enter the mountains’ gaps

like the violets and blacks

of a lion’s irises;

these and the other thousand things

fearful and surprising

and all the rest that can’t be foreseen

and is the heart of the sky.

But now it’s the trees’ stillness

and this sweet smell

of closeness and newness

that prepare me.

I pull at my laces, I love the tightness

of the boots on my ankles

and the lingering of this leafy

clustering quiet,

early earth that waits

settled and dumbfounded

with its buzz of a gaze

that expands like veins

of quartz.

2009