"From the Excavations of the Memory by now..."

Archaeology of thought, labyrinth
of arcane routes, amidst a cosmic dawn
and a withered, arid, pierced,
ashen, almost petrified
lunar walk where the explosion
of an idea brings smoke and
mud from the excavations of the memory:
what remains for us in the heart?
A breathlessness, a fear, an anxiety
of appearing secure, a chasing after
the gloomy blue of desire
while nothingness spreads beyond measure
like leaden blotches of foul-smelling and crude oil...

Not even a word is any longer sufficient,
the illusion is grown in little vases
of the mind like a plant of sweet basil,
watered, shone, caressed
and perfumed...

Melancholy, melancholy
give me the strength to not look
for reasons for my introspection,
from the excavations of the memory by now
so little remains,
faces bloated with stupor
like billiard balls
that skate over the green cloth
moved by unruly rancor


If I could study my mind
as the map of an unknown country
seen from above aboard a plane,
if I could glimpse roads and factories
debris and mud, lanes and buildings,
fountains and gardens, brooks and rivers,

All the geography of a clouded brain
would become water-meloned red, split
in two, where the black tapering seeds
stray like genetic leeches
to create or destroy destinies...

All the geography of the mind
would be like an impossible ball
of thread, with no Ariadne
to discover its beginning;
my whole destiny would then be
open and certain, I wouldn't torment myself
with delusions, defeats, mistakes, remorse,
clumsy moves and without intelligence,

every huge abyss, every pit dug
at one's feet, would only be fruit
of an inherited chemical combination,
central geography of molecules and
enzymes, which creates our irremediable
hell or paradise...

Franco Simongini
Rome, 1989