Amazed by Jesus

I was a shepherd 

longtime ago

somewhere in Bethlehem

watching my sheeps

Though I was waiting

for Someone to come

I could believe

only my sight

Then I saw a light

sparkling 'n  the sky

I heard a voice

singing with joy

I joined the star

aimed to see

the Glory of God

the King of glee

 I'm still astonished

looking today 

 as Jesus wanted 

choosing to stay 

The least of poorness

 neatness of magic

 plenty with nothingness

the brilliance of love

Please leave me Jesus

the eyes of a child

looking  the Crib

wondering while. 

Late reply from Cagliari - 1

Dear Elem, fourty-five years have gone past since you wrote me from Cornwall.

I've been surely answering you, in some way, somewhen. But I'm sure my reply have been cast in the phobias and contradictions of my juvenescence.

How are you, anyway?

We are both quite old ones now, aren't we? While adolescence is such a wonderful age, isn't it?

What I wanted to tell you is that you are also so handsome to me!!! And that Cornwall is so beatiful, and I will be soon coming to see you, with or without a friend for Carol!!!

But our teens are so silly and shy, my dear friend!!!

It does n't really matter what you might be doing now, but I'm going to come to see you over there!

Can you imagine it, Elem?

Oh, probably you wont recognize the handsome boy you wrote I was.

Now I'm an old, slightlyfat and almost  hairless man...

Don't worry, elem, I would send you a picture of me before leaving...though I realize you might not be there anymore... in theRock at Wadebridgre...

Let's say that. if you answer this letter, it will mean that you still there... Oh that would be fantastic!!!

'See you seen my dear Elem. Love form Cagliari, Sardinia. Reply soon if you can. George 

Love from Cornwall - 2

Dear George,
 thank you very much for your letter and photograph. I think you look very sweet.

 I have a friend called Carol who would like an Italian boy penfriend. If you know anyone who would like an english girl penfriend (aged about 15), please send me his name and adress and i will give them to Carol. She will be very happy, because she hopes he will be as handsome, as she says, you are.

I must change my handwriting now, because my father does not like the former style. Do not think that you have a different penfriend, or something. It's still Elem (Lee) writing to you.

I have been swimming a lot lately and i have been taking the people for whom I work to the beach.

Do you realise that our letters take about eight days to reach their destination?

I'm working in a shop all the holydays. it sells shoes, clothes, and all kinds of golfing equipments and the people there are very nice.

Tomorrow we finish school for seven weeks.

August 25th there is a big party in a large field. all the money goes to the Church. I have been chosen to paint all the notices.

Do you like to sing? At Christmas time I am alaways chosen to sing in a church service. I think that singing is for enjoyment. but my parents seem to think it is nice for me to sing and so I do.

I hope you like this postcard of Rock. the golf course is a little behind the trees.

Reply soon, Love Elem.

Love from Cornwall - 1

Dear friend, thank you very much for your lovely letter which I enjoyed reading very much, (I understand your French very well), and for your photograph and postcards.

Sardegna is very pretty and i am very interested in it.

I have only one sister. She is 13 years old and is called Katherin, but I usually call her Kate. I have no brothers.

I am sorry I can not send you a photograph of my self yet, but i have  longer hair than I did last summer, but I promise to send you one as soon as possibile.

I attend a grammar school. I am in the 4th year and Katherin in in the 2nd year.

This term we do much athletics. I love athletics and we have a beautiful green sports field.

We do not learn golf at school but I work for a golf professional and his wife, who not having any children, treat me like their daughter and teach me free of charge.

I hope you like Rock beach. We live near this beach and it is very beautiful. There is a sailing club there.

Well, I hope you can understand this letter. If you cannot, tell me, and I will write in French.

Reply soon.

Love from Elem.

About me

Like many poets I'm fundamentally a lonely man. But at a certain time of his life, a poet needs to share   knowledge and experiences with other poets. This time has come for me. I've been spending most of my fifty five years searching the reasons why we are living here, on this earth, just in this space-time, sometimes feeling like trapped in my body, and in order to focus better my thoughts I started writing down my emotions. That's why I discovered myself as a poet. Now I want to understand what is a poet for.

I think a poet is a man who asks himself some questions and tries to answer them for  the benefit of other people,  beyond his own's horizons.

 A poet is a mediator between God and man (or between Nature and man, we can say after Wordsworth, if we don't want to be involved with such a n engaging matter as God). I see the poet partly  as a prophet and partly  as a witness  of his time.  Of course a poet is a man like the others. As such he feels  his own emotions and deals diary with love, pain, sorrow, joyfulness (only some days are for joy, unfortunately).

But the poet is also an artist, which makes the difference. As any artist the poet utilises special tools to build up the handicrafts of his art. These tools, for the poet, are the form's devices, the meter, the rhyme, the rhythm and, of course, the words. The more he knows how to use these tools, the more the poet can hit answering in a fashioned form those funding questions which are essential part of the role he has to play in the society. It's worthless to add that the use of technical instruments  is supposed to improve the result in terms of emotion and pleasure the reader expects to receive from poetry.

My poetic production can be divided in two main parts: the first one is made of  something like seventy poems written in free verses  along thirty years, from 1976 to  2006. It is a mixing of sad, spiritual and love poems.

The second part, more conspicuous than the first, starts on 1996 when my father, before dying, gave to me a late seventeenth’s  manuscript fragments from an ancient, our Sicilian ascendant.

Developing and studying upon these fragments I find out that the original manuscript formerly contained,  on blank and rhymed verses,  56 Cantos including 73 books of the Holy Bible and  nineteen apocryphal books.

Until now I have succeeded in rebuilding all the Cantos regarding the Old Testament (which form the Poem of Creation, partly already edited) and the four Gospel with ten apocryphal which have been transfused in a novel, set in the sixteenth century with the title of “Four voices, one story”, still to be published.

This second part of my poetic work presents a varied metric range going from  ottava rima in decasyllables to  terza rima also of decasyllables passing through quatrains of seven syllables and some other classical metric forms mostly from Petrarch's devices such as Ballatas, Canzones and even Sonnets.

Being a husband, a father, a teacher and a lawyer, I have been composing  all this during night time and in my free summer time (when not reading some good lectures, which I know plenty).

 My revision process regards above all the translation of my works in to English language.

 It's quite hard and I don’t think I will be able to translate the entire Poem of Creation respecting the  accents and the rhymes the Cantos have in the original Italian form.

At the moment I succeeded in translating the First Canto (you can read part of it, if you find the  time to do it, both in my blog http://poetryandmore-albixforpoetry.blogspot.com/ and in my personal web page at www.neopoet.com. )

I would like to publish   this first Canto and some of my best poems in a book to be titled "Living Witness" A tribute for a New Romantic Poetry.  

After the preacher

QOHELET

Probably published about  250 A.D. – Verses on terza rima

I fake of being the very wise King

whence to show you the deceptions of the world

What  appears to be  true

seems often someone  squaring the circle:

I’m not pessimistic but just  a real man!

What is worth to be joyous or sad?

Everything is vanity of vanities!

Vain it is the pleasure that oozes from love,

Vain is wisdom, and vain is  humbleness!

Vain is who lives and vain is who dies;

vain is stupidity that  pushes them low,

vain is the glory that induces  the honor!

Vain the accusation which offends by the stones,

vain the defense that indulges the punishments!

Vain it is to eat either soberly or  crassly,

vain the fast which dries up the veins;

vain is the  sunset and vain is the dawn!

Vain is also the river which goes by and by!

Vain every puff of wind and of bora,

vain is any event under the sun;

vain are the  current and vain are the early days

vain every hate and evil which aches;

vain is each effort or mental contest;

vain is to work at the mortar and grindstones;

vain to choose what  is worth or  not worth for!

Vain to be stoned  from the must,

vain is also each manual effort;

Vain  is want to be vain at any rate,

vain is the forgery and vain is the truth  

for people who  are bound to an identical fate!

Vainly  I look for You through thousands of  paths,

Please don’t be vain and treat me  sweetly

My unique Lord! 

The broken violin

We all know that a violin is used to make sounds; at least since the great lutist in Cremona Stradivari and great genoan player Paganini have showed the world how enjoyble is to hear its music. They must be tossing and turning in their graves, knowing the way British Airways treats musicians and their instruments. 
As matter of fact, like reported by her friend Sara Avery,  B.A. forced a violin player flying for concerts with the above named flying company,  to check her violin. (Their policy doesn't allow instruments over 56 cm/22 in in length on board. Her only choices were to check it, leave it behind despite needing it for practicing + getting routine maintenance in the US, or forfeit a $3,000 plane ticket and perhaps her last chance to visit her elderly mother.)
2. They smashed it to bits.
3. They are paying her less than 1/4 of the appraised replacement value.
Until #BritishAirways changes their policy, it is not safe for musicians to fly BA with their instruments.
As a lawyer I'm not so sure that the way B.A. has behaved is utterly correct!
At least, according to italian law, the story shows a negligent and faulty behaviour to be blamed on charge of the international flying vector, though is reported that British Airways employees have made up their decisions against the safety of the Sara's friend's violin, obeyng, it's reported,  to their own regulation.
Nevertheless I would listen to a specialized lawyer, in order to find out if such rules, as those applied by B.A.,  are in line with good faith and right care which are required to any contractor all over in the world.

Berlin today

I've recently gone  to Berlin. Just a couple of days to break on the daily routine and take a breath outside the ordinary affairs.
It must sound evident, even lapalissian, that when you go somewhere, abroad or anywherelse, you are still yourself.
Nevertheless there is something new and different on you, when you are somewhwerelse from your ordinary space life.
I can't exactly say what this difference consists of,  but anyway you can feel it.
Every place, as matter of fact, has got its own imprint, a sort of sensitive character or personality.
May be is the astral conjunction or simply the geographic location; it might be the sorrounding's effect or, if you believe on it, the spirits of the good and  evil people already gone, but previously living there.
The ancient used to call it "The genius loci" which can be translated as "The character of the place" or something like that.
In Berlin that particular genius is made of open spaces, discretion, courtesy, a german spirit of efficient and steady intelligence and open sympathy.
I also felt the shadow of a wall, hanging somewhere, like a vagabond phantom searching for answers still to be given.
The same answers the poet searchs when he asks why people very often make their own way out of peaceful brotherhood.
Germans are now our brother in the name of Europe, in the name of Christianity, in the name of the common belonging to this place called  Earth Planet; but yesterday there were even two different kinds of Germans: eastern and western Germans!
The genius of Berlin is young, fresh, enjoyable!
Yes, you can enjoy Berlin!!!

What life is for - IV and V

Scene IV

(Soon after a clock beats up five o’clock, someone knocks at the entrance door)

 

Francesco (detaching himself)

            - Someone has knocked at the door! May be  Max is back.

Brenda (going  to open the door)

-  He often forgets his own  keys when I’m at home, though I’m  waiting for someone at five o’clock!

Jonathan(Enters with a bag on his shoulder)

-Hello Brenda! Where’s old Max! I got a present for him in this bag!!!

Brenda (with surprise)

-It’s you, Jon?!? Welcome!! Max is coming back soon! Leave your present in your bag, please!  I want to introduce to you a good italian friend of ours…….

Scene V

After they hear knocking at the door, Brenda goes to open it

(Enter  Inspector Green and his two policemen)

Insp. Green (while entering, showing his badge)

-Everybody keep steady, please! That’s a legal search! (to Jonathan) And you Norman or Vincent or  whatever   you have been named in your fucking Jamaica,  give us that bag!!! 

Jonathan ( still with his hand in the bag)

-I don’t think there is nothing interesting a legal search in my bag!!!

Insp. Green ( with sarcastic smile)

-Don’t worry about that, maroon! It’s up to us  the valuation, isn’t it boys???

First PM

-Come on , young boy! Don’t make the Inspector been upset…

Second PM

            - And I’m also very nervous indeed!!!

Jonathan

-I’m telling you that there is only a present for my friend’s Max birthday!!!!

Insp. Green(still sarcastic)

-Well! Why not? A very good present from Jamaica…

First PM (getting closer and grabbing Jon’s bag)

-Let’s see your present…

Second PM (drawing the pack out )

-I’ll try a guess! It weighs  a pound…more and less

Insp. Green (tearing off the paper)

-Bloody Hell! Someone is kidding up!!! What does this book here mean  ?

Jonathan (catching the paper from the floor in a very nervous voice)

-I believe I’ve told you a few times before, haven’t I? I hope you have some good paper to wrap it up again!!!!

First PM (grabbing the book)

-The Trilogy of Don Juan!!

Second PM (sneering)

-Who is going to read such a boring thing?!?

Jonathan (grabbing violently the book from his hands)

-I doubt you would be  able to understand an only word of it!!!

Insp. Green (emptying the bag’s content on the floor)

-Well ! OK! Let’s stop messing around! You give us the stuff and we all be all right? Where is that pound of grass from Jamaica?

Jonathan (always  angrier collecting his things from the floor)

-Listen to me now! My name is Jonathan Close! J, o, n, ‘you know? Without any h! My father is Jew ‘ you know? Though I can reasonably suppose that my ancestor’s bones rest in the English ground much  before than yours’s! When in life they were famous for other pounds of different stuff….now  if you’re looking for any grass either you go in to my house’s lawn or you catch a plane right to your beloved Jamaica, all right???

Insp. Green

            - All right! You have well played your role, young boy! Just collect your things and let’s work out our business!! Who is the landlord here?

What life is for -III

Scene III

(Max’s house living room; Francesco is reading a book sitting in an armchair ; Brenda comes from the central door who leads upstairs; from the open door they can ear sounds of feasting voices and rock music from late seventies;)

Brenda (entering)

-Here you are Francesco! I’m sorry you are not enjoying the party!!

Francesco (closing the book on his left hand)

-Don’t be sorry, Brenda! The party is all right. It’s me to be wrong!

Brenda (laughing)

-That’s exactly what Max says when he wants to leave a party! Do you know where has he  gone, by the way? You left together upstairs, didn’t you?

Francesco

-Well, I simply followed him downstairs! And he just told me here I would be in a quiet reading place , ‘you know? But after receiving  a phone call… he went out to make his own phone call…. I suppose that telephone must be broken for calling out I mean(shows a telephone apparatus on a table)…..

Brenda (pulling the telephone up with confidence)

-It could be….but I ‘m not so sure  …..

Francesco (with embarrassed voice)

-I see….May be he had to make a sort of private call…. I would have left him alone …..

Brenda (with  a reassuring tone of voice, sitting on the opposite armchair)

-Don’t be upset, please, Francesco! Max is such a claustrophobic subject from time to time…..he wanted to go out.. that’s all!!!May I stay with you for a while?

Francesco

-Of course you can! I’ll be pleased!

Brenda

-Will you really?

Francesco (Putting the book down on the table and sitting with crossing legs and folded arms)

-Sure ! Why should I not?

Brenda (sitting on the edge of the armchair and lowing her voice)

-May be you can be my confessor….

Francesco (laughing)

-I’m sorry but I’m not enable to confess you! Not yet, at least….

Brenda (as above)

-But you could however  advice me…would you?

Francesco

-Well, it depends from the matter, ‘ you know?

Brenda (with sensual voice)

-It’s a matter of love!!!”

Francesco (showing indifference)

-What kind of love does it deal with?

Brenda (surprised)

-Love is just love, isn’t it?

Francesco

-Sure it is! But it also takes so many forms….

Brenda

-Let’s talk about sex and love!!!

Francesco

-Not always sex and love march together, do they?

Brenda (sinking into the armchair)

-Don’t be such a sophisticate prayer please!!! I’m just a mere student from art’s school!!!

Francesco

-I know you are! Max has shown me some paints of yours…

Brenda

-Has he? How have you liked them?

Francesco

-They show a sort of….How would I say?  I mean a sort of universal  desire of love….But I’m  only a student from theological ‘s  school, ‘ you know?

Brenda (laughing)

-‘You mean desire to get love or just to give it?

Francesco

-I don’t really know….may be both of them…

Brenda (closing back)

-Do you think a woman can love two men at the same time?

Francesco (showing a little embarrassed)

-What do you exactly mean by that?

Brenda

-That   I make sex with Max and George… I mean, all three together, at the same time, in the same bed, playing the same erotic performance,  do you understand me now?

Francesco

-Yes, yes, I do!  You don’t need to say more….

Brenda (closing weakly her eyes)

-We take pleasure each other: I love them and they love me…..

Francesco

-And you would like to know my personal point of view or you prefer the theological rule for such a matter?

Brenda

-I’m just interested on your own personal point of view!

Francesco

-May be you might be thinking of loving them but they, for sure, are in love one each other!!!

Brenda (with surprise)

-What are you trying to say to me?

Francesco

-I say that Max and George pretend to love you but actually  they realize their reciprocal love through your body…

Brenda (feeling upset)

            ….in other words you’re telling me that  they hide themselves behind my body?

Francesco

-That’s right!

Brenda

-Though difficult to believe it sounds quiet unpleasant to me!

Francesco

-I’m sorry, Brenda! I didn’t really want to hurt you! That’s just what I have seen inside your words!!

Brenda (sinking again in the armchair with a sigh, firstly like in trance )

            - There are so many stale and unprofitable uses in this world…….Nevertheless when they lie with me   I feel  that my body is  granting their desires, ‘you             know? And afterwards they keep satisfied….

Francesco

-But my question is: are you satisfied yourself???

Brenda (like above, after a short pause )

            - Sometimes I feel there is something unfinished in all that… as if I searched for something       else…..may be a son to be mine above all… above conventions… above his own         father…whoever he might be……

Francesco

            - ‘You mean like in a matriarchal society?

Brenda

            - …. It might be so…

Francesco

-But human  kind have already passed through that stadium. I think the world must go ahead……

Brenda (like following her intimate thoughts)

            -  Sometimes  I feel so astonished.. so confused…so ungratified…

Francesco (standing up)

-When I told you  before, that there are so many kinds of love, I meant that sexual love is an ever rising need: the more you make it, the more you need it…As matter of fact there is a superior level of love which is able to extinguish for ever our thirst of love….

Brenda (standing up and embracing him)

-Please, Francesco, show me that kind of love! Please, I really want it!!!

... to be continued...

The soul's comedy - 2

Third Scene

( While the cries slow down, Dante and Virgil reappear in the scene; a mute  video keeps on showing the bargains in the stock exchange’s hall)

Virgil

-          Have you got them?

Dante (in an embarrassed tone of voice)

                - I can’t really understand what’s  going on over there, master???

Virgil (sighing)

                - They are making money...

Dante (a bit perplexed)

                - Do you mean, they are sort of landlords bankers???

Virgil

                - I didn't say that my son! They are actually mostly inventing money than producing it. They produce nothingness as matter of fact… I mean: not material stuffs…

Dante

                - I beg your pardon, sir, but I'm afraid I can't get the meaning of it!

Virgil

                - Of course you can't, my son!! It's not easy for anybody to understand. Listen to me, I'll try to explain to you the difference between production and speculation, real creation and virtual richness!  If you write a good book, for instance, and you sell it to a firm to be published and then the book is  sold in the shops: the buyers have a book in their hands; you, the editors ,the book sellers and all the people involved in the business share the profits; is that clear up to now?

Dante

                - Very clear indeed, master!

Virgil

                - That's right! Let's suppose  now  that your publisher hasn't got the  money  to publish your book!

How can he get it?

Dante

                - He goes to a Bank, I might suppose!

Virgil

                -And so do I, my son! But what happens if the banker hasn't got enough money himself?

Dante

                - I suppose my book won't see the light yet!!

Virgil

                - It might be right, my son! Unless you don't consider the role played by those guys up there (he shows the stocks exchangers)

Dante (perplexed)

                - I'm sorry, master, but I'm still blind...

Virgil

                - Never mind it! Just follow me for a little more! The banker goes to those guys (he points out the stocks exchangers again) and asks them to sell the idea of publishing your book to the savers! 'You know what savers are, don't you my son?

Dante (readily)

                - Well, they are people who have more money than they need to live through!

Virgil

                - Correct, my son!

Dante

                - And of course they want their money to be safe for future needs!!

Virgil

                - That's still correct, my son!!! Put it like that: the savers trust the bankers and the stocks exchangers;  they even trust you and  your writing's skills! But this would not be a problem: financial investors have more instruments to convince savers in order to reach their targets! I'll show you later how a magic box  can wash people's brains just staying at home!!!

Dante (trying to understand)

                - So the banker asks the stocks exchanger to ask the savers to buy the idea of publishing my books...

Virgil

                - Yes, that's it!!! There are plenty of instruments: the publisher might have emitted some titles to guarantee the credits and the savers will buy those titles; or they can buy the future profits which are expected from the selling  of your books; they can even just lend their money on the promise of an interest to be paid...

Dante

                - And this money is given to the banker and borrowed by my publisher...

Virgil

                ... who publishes and distributes your books all over the world!!!

Dante

                - All over the world,  master?

Virgil

                - Of course! Can't you write a latin book to be sold all over the world?

Dante

                - Well, I suppose I can do it, master!!

Virgil

                - Well! And that's your first book, is n't it?

Dante

                - Yes, master! Though I don't see nothing wrong on it...

Virgil

                - But this is only the beginning, my son!!!

Dante

                - What do you mean , master?

Virgil

                - I mean that now, those guys (indicates the stokes exchangers like before) can ask the savers to buy your next book...

Dante

                - But I have just written my first one!!!

Virgil

                - It doesn't really matter my son!!! They will sell all the goods not yet produced like the wheat just seeded and all the events on the future to come!!!

Dante (very surprised)

                - Will they?

Virgil

                - And that's still nothing! If a firm is worth one million they can increase its value, just up there (shows the busy guys in the stocks exchange once again) up to ten or to  hundred  millions, though its real value is still just one thousand!! And that's thanks to the trust of people, 'till the game goes on!!!

Dante

                - Now I know master, what you meant, when you told me the guys over there make money from nothing!!!

Virgil

                - I'm glad you did it, my son!!! Come on, now, let's leave these incontinent people and go to the lower states!!!

Dante

-          Where shall we go master?

Virgil

-          Well, I think you know, my son, that human heart is basically affected by two evil tendencies: the incontinence and the mischief…

Dante

-          I believe it upon your word master!!!

Virgil

-          And you surely know too, that mischief people can be divided into violent and fraudulent mischief, don’t you?

Dante

-          Of course I do master!

Virgil

-          Very well!!! Then I’ll tell you that were are going to complete the visit of first five circles where are convicted stingey,  lustfuls,  greedies,  irascible, slothful, prodigals and so on… You have already had a fore view, aint you?

... to be continued...