The Ace of Hearts

today’s pigeons are heavy they carry churches on their back
they rest on my windowsill when it rains like oiling
and the world anoints to heal its lack of love
i get angry because i cannot make them leave
they stay as long as they please knowing what i will never know
with their placid eyes in the light of this century
sometimes white-feathered
i reread the bible and my old letters under magnifying lens
my bow-tied memories
cut them as if a deck of cards to see what’s drawn out
it’s amazing nothing changed i grew old sitting at the wooden gate
on a wooden chair in a life with basil drying under rafters
and grapevines uprooted

persephone’s memories

and there’s rigoletto laughing out the cry of the one who’s defeated by fate/ among the spectators dressed in blue by the light flooding them between the acts/ and there’s the woman eternally defeated by love/ a cup with poison from which they drink/ the men used to believe

maybe the world means to win over that sentimental beast/ to open your eyes without amazement in front of the newborn’s cry/ the world in which passions die in the name of freedom

i wonder/
if this is exactly the sun in everybody’s eyes/
how could I tear apart the veil woven around every cradle/
with such soft hands it is impossible

somebody plays god every day/
lights up the fire and waists time/
searches among deities and tombs a piece of clay that he kneads/
folding the dough/
he tries to invent another empty space inside the earth’s crust

i took my knapsack on my shoulders it smelled like bread and onion i climbed upon the hill’s mane/ i felt beautiful and young/ i believed there will be a right hand holding my left hand/ when i came back it was snow and the house’s chimney was faintly whistling/ i bit a red apple from yesteryear’s crop/ it was cold and wrinkled

in the play of a lonely child there is room for a whole world/
of angels