The following poems are from Umberto Fiori’s volume of poetry entitled Translations.
Stop
There’s a middle zone
after the curve of the road-bridge,
a dead point
between a shop window full of lamps
and a field where weeds and brambles
heavy with shoots
creep towards the dust.
It’s there that, one day of our lives,
buses take us.
I don’t why the following poem Stylite reminds me of the English actor Jeremy Irons; maybe it has something to do with imagery of the sea and the jellyfish (Irons lives in a castle near Kinsale in County Cork). He is a fine actor and like Ralph Fiennes, another brilliant English actor and a truly outstanding performer on the stage or theatre. But I would have to say that Jeremy Irons is my favourite English actor because he is simply a brilliant performer.
Stylite
It was like swimming
in the open sea, and being caught
suddenly, in a shoal of jellyfish.
With the fury of a saint,
a hermit,
who from the top of his pillar in the desert,
shouts out his visions,
his prayers,
I thanked them, I wished them good evening,
I begged their pardon.
On the Street
If at the corner and old lady
- or, say, a policeman -
turns,
face sculpted by the light
of a beautiful day,
and speaks to me,
just to me, here,
about how there’s no respect,
or how hot it is,
I feel weak, like a saint
brushed by eternity,
I feel plants grow, I feel the earth turn.
Everything seems clear and strong to me,
everything has yet to happen.
The poem entitled Boss evokes memories of one or two ‘bosses’ I have had the good fortune or otherwise to meet during my working life. Perhaps poetry and it’s magnificent power to influence and impress are akin to drinking fine wine or finding something in life that really impresses you.
Boss
When you hear somebody shouting in the street
- Hey, Boss! – and you turn, and realise
it’s you they want,
you feel greatly honoured
to be there: a passer-by,
an able man, who can lend a hand
and then sit down to eat, maybe
in a restaurant, biting a piece of bread
and remembering that moon-world
where no-one was anything.
