GABRIELLA GAROFALO
from “Blue Days”
Some are blurry, some in black and white –
Snapshots, no use leading them
Where Hecate seeds her wheat
Among comets in a jumble and lost kids –
You’d like to shoo them:
Don’t, they’re starving for tales –
Oh, you do sound well spoken,
You wretched sky, but careful:
The blue that slaughters off the prophets
Isn’t an attention seeker –
Body doesn’t love
The offspring of blazing rows in the womb –
Please ask the embittered light
‘Is everything ok?’ only if icy cold runs the house
And too much blue thwarts the soul –
What? I’m sorry, tradition and time-honored rules
Require you must not blame the slayer
If he happens to be a man –
Why don’t you call Yahweh, then?
It’s him you want, the one who can destroy
The rippers of young leaves –
Before they leave, before food tastes bad
Without our loss and grief.
Sometimes words and books echo her question:
Why these nomadic sounds?
How incongruous, really, it’s a glitch –
They both have soul food air and breath,
Yet only missing trees come back in April –
The missing men you feel jailed in her womb,
Evil green amnion –
The point is, desire loathes making plans,
His throb scares words and they fall down –
Even worse, he shrugs off your abstract blaze –
No ifs, no buts, no whys when the moon runs stalking,
Of course no light from her to shaky times,
True jackal that she is –
Well, it’s her life, not yours –
Yes, but a woman’s gaze is moving on,
With trees and loss she’ll share her water,
Or so fathers say, who knows –
The flesh? Oh, she’s not the wiser,
As ever she gives you scraps of heaven,
Many-colored, yes, but no use for them
Nor they migrate –
Then grass and stars ask for attention,
Tide can’t silence your breath and you can’t,
I say you can’t be the eternal never –
Well, now that would be a gift, wouldn’t it?
And a nice one to boot.
Born in Italy some decades ago, Gabriella Garofalo fell in love with the English language at six, started writing poems (in Italian) at six and is the author of Lo sguardo di Orfeo, L’inverno di vetro, Di altre stelle polari, and Blue Branches.
