Cisa’s Highway

Translated by Elena Poletto

Ten years - maybe lessbefore my father (re)dies in me (with carelessness he was lowered down and a fog bank divided us forever).

Today, a kilometre from the mountain pass, a dishevelled hairy Erinys waves a cloth from the edge of a cliff; extinguishes an already extinguished day, and farewell.

Know - said someone leaving me onceknow that it does not end here, from moment to moment, believe in that other life, from coast to coast, wait for it - it will come as a summer's return beyond the mountain pass.

Thus speaks the recidivist hope, bites the pulp of summer in a watermelon, sees out there those trees perpetuate each in itself its own nymph and behind the halo of echoes and vision in the thirsty valley the pulses of a lake making of Mantua a Tenochtitlàn.

From tunnel to tunnel from dazzle to blindness I stretch out a hand. It comes back to me empty. I extend an arm. I hold a shoulder of air.

You still do not know - hisses in the din of the vaults the Sibyl, the one that more and more wishes to dieDon’t you suspect that of all colours the strongest, the fastest is the colour of emptiness?