It will be November and the days will be short. It will be standard time, which for some reason is the darkest time of year. It will also be the beginning of low clouds and lukewarm hopes that at least the cold will arrive to confirm that time does not pass only for us. It may be that the world spins in endless space, with loves just born, with loves already ended, with the joy and pain of people like me, and it may be that this was Jimmy Fontana.
Perhaps it is because of all this, and also because of the feeling that things are not going as we would like them to, as they should, that I find myself wondering: what is the beauty of a home made of, if not the lives of those who live in it? But at the same time, the question that arises timidly and bitterly is also: what happens to that beauty if, in a sudden, interminable moment, an entire people is expropriated from those buildings, those gardens, where they lived, cried and rejoiced?
And that’s not even the worst thing that’s happening.
Even I, who seek answers from my comfortable position, feel the need to find shelter. And since walls don’t make me feel safe, I start looking for things that make me feel at home. Things I love. For example, poetry.
The truth is that I had to wait a long time after finishing secondary school to fall in love with it. Back then, poets seemed to me to be dull and stale, decadent and full of big words. Perhaps that’s why it took me so long to answer the question by my self “What is poetry for?”. And the only honest and indisputable answer I found is that poetry is for nothing at all.
The tingling in my nose, just before tears came, suggested it to me resolutely as I read the verses of a Polish poet whose unpronounceable name is still a challenge today: Wislawa Szymborska.
That poem, without any pretensions of lyricism, spoke, some would say simply, of an onion.
But how can you write a poem about an onion?! I thought it made no sense, yet somehow I had found meaning in it.
Those words, one after the other, blossomed inside me, in a centrifugal motion, like a powerful reaction to an invisible stimulus. Much more than any complete story, described from beginning to end, they seemed to grant the writer freedom and the reader the luxury of seeing the abysmal similarity between a tiny piece of nothingness and the universe.
I think it was on that very day that I began to love poetry that serves no purpose. I usually recognise it because it resists the thoughts that overwhelmingly dominate my days, even though I make no effort to memorise it. This poetry is my wild country that cannot be manipulated, that speaks Italian, English and a thick dialect that I understand even though I didn’t think I knew it.
How strange it would be, after all, to have a reason to love something, to love it for its usefulness or even to love something you need.
So now that I have made this very long introduction, I call upon all the voices of memory, searching for a verse that will save me from the noise, a sound that does not explain but remains.
I seek it to remind me that even when the world seems to lose meaning, there are certainly perfect movements of the lips, which, when they touch, can create new spaces in which to rest.
And so I tell myself that the beauty of a home, of a people, of a heart, does not truly end until someone finds the courage to name it.
Until someone, in the November twilight, turns on a light and decides that even a poem can change the world.
Because perhaps poetry serves no purpose, it’s true, but from that nothingness everything comes.
I swear by my milk teeth,
I swear by running and sweating,
I swear by water and thirst,
I swear by all the kisses of love,
I swear by whispering at night,
I swear by laughing loudly,
I swear by the word “no” and I swear by the word “never” and by the thrill,
I swear by happiness.
I swear that this earth is not coming to an end
I swear that sometimes I feel such great joy,
I swear that joy exists, that it exists and I feel it, and
I swear that I will not let myself be saddened by any whining prophet,
by any artist who trades in pain,
by anyone who runs around in blood and explains it to me,
by any barker with his suffocating words.
I swear that I will save my delicacy,
the delicacy of the little and the nothing of the little little,
I will save the little and the nothing, the faded colour,
the small shadow, the imperceptible that comes to light,
the seed inside the seed, the nothing inside that seed.
Because from that nothing every fruit is born.
From that nothing everything comes.
From “Senza polvere, senza peso” (Without Dust, Without Weight) by Mariangela Gualtieri
Ilaria Serpi
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