PARIS
1910
You didn’t hide the shadows,
the wounds, the tame sharks
in the heart, the flattery placed
on the broken window sill.
Under that window the hyenas gathered,
they defied the moon, they tormented it
with belches and insults; clumsy singsong
like brush strokes impressed with remorse.
Could I not have loved you right away?
Could I have left you in the open
and without my hands on your forehead?
Modì, now it’s late at night
In the Russia of frost and memories;
punishment is now the voice of the devil
and nothing can fill the disaster of
Your absence that barks and hurts.
I shouldn’t have abandoned you,
your colors told me, rainbows
that you gave me they warned me not,
also the shadows and the barking of the dogs
when we came back late at night
holding each other up, singing Baudelaire.
My body was united to yours
like a blade that while cutting gives a shape
a new set-up, to the supreme truth.
Volcanoes know a love like this,
the witches of the virgin forests,
the Ural wind when it becomes glass
I left. Silly, afraid,
foolish, foolish, skinny, helpless, unprepared
to enjoy the tales of the abyss,
the stars that the owls stole from the sky.
Forgive me, Modì, I couldn’t stand the impact,
the pawing of wild herds
that ran wild inside you.
I had to drink the Seine, swallow the Louvre,
your old shirt with your sweat,
the bottles you crushed
throwing them on the irons of the Eiffel Tower.
I had to have the courage that Jeanne then had.
Forgive me, Modì, I was too young,
too crazy about you and already married.
I went back, you were already another; I deserve this agony
in the gray of Petersburg without your colors.
English Translation by Claudia Piccinno