And all of them you’ll see dead, still dead,
All of them, cities, towns, hamlets
Dead still, life forever runaway –
So, please don’t fret, my grass, my trees, my friends,
I know what you’re looking for:
Death getting them as soon as the streets stop
Hugging homeless, beggars and cripples,
Death getting them as soon as the streets lock their walls,
Let’s throw away those who can’t afford the front-row seats –
Aren’t all streets heartless gods or nasty stepmothers? –
No names, please, those blue twilights fighting like thugs,
Nor do you deserve the lost items the thugs gave you
To eject lost souls to a maze of harvests, pomegranates,
And who cares, souls are such foul fighters,
The choicest food for harvest celebrations –
Oh, God, you here? How nice! And whom is your cyder for?
Maybe for the renegade days,
Maybe for the minds shacking up with a rotten silence,
Or that tricky equation we call life,
Only it’s just a wild loss, so drop it quick, c’mon,
All his life the sky’s been stalking women, he know best,
The limbs deep in the water, the words junked from traps and blows –
Look, God, give your cyder to demise, as she never yields
To green briberies, or the white of clouds, you know?
No charm, no shape, no playing by deception,
Only hunger, the evil bite to our flesh –
I know, I know, green is bloody hungry, oh, and before I forget
Any use for his scraps of lives?
What a daft gift, a waste of colours while death
Runs fast to gather falling souls,
Look, don’t you worry for there is room
Where they shake like scared poems –
Trust me, the lovely porticoes rife with rain and flowers
Will get their gift, who knows, maybe an unchained river,
Maybe the earth dancing berserk in a game of one-upmanship –
Clashing like cicadas’ songs or, if you wish,
The wicked subtlety of mornings,
The witches trilling sweet lullabies while making
Gingerbread houses for the kids.

Inky Interview Special: Italian Poet Gabriella Garofalo

Poetry Drawer: Asymmetry At Full Blast by Gabriella Garofalo