Medusa by Gianfranco Palmery

Poetry is for death—music
resonating enchanted within unadorned
subterranean chambers or still laden
with relics—light and dust—for a cortège
of faded figures, which flutes and cymbals
animate, Medusan, in the darkness:

it's sun in the sepulcher, with its pale
rays of stone, diurnal moon, glow
that rings night to night in an eternal
sleepless night—Oh clear, eternal
night of deepest sleep! And that sole
sound ascending serpentine resplendent

from the obscure necropolis of the mind

APOTHEOSIS OF DUST

To my bit of aching, disorderly
dust, I give a daily
minuscule portion of dust:
from water where it descends and dissolves
to blood, to the depth of the cracked paste
that mixes life and death, dust
heals dying dust.

Trick, display, fragile semblance
of worked clay, pulp or pulsating
dust, ruin disguised
as victory: may the deception
or whatever it is, still last, loss, precarious gain,
until the hidden opus is discovered,
the secret of bones, of veins.

These translations by Barbara Carle are from Garden of Delights, Selected Poems, Gradiva Publications, New York, 2010.

Collana Tarsie

Gianfranco Palmery
Medusa
With three drawings by the author
2001 Pages 52 Euro 8,00

First edition of 300 numbered copies

ISBN 978-88-89299-14-2

Reviews of Medusa (in Italian language)