Photo by JB, 2014
Here we are again: a year more
fell due silently amid empty memories
that don’t give substance to this my present.
What is left of all travelled time?
Plum trees and buds wake up again, now
while I see new green in fields and woods.
Dry and dusty ground supports my steps
I think Easter is a far mirage
March, 17th 2019
In that day, for the first time in my life, I did not go to my work to avoid snow chaos.
JB, 2019
Winter ice freezes any trees’ shade
covering with thick and clotted frost fog
every branch, every trunk and this landscape.
In my heart I feel that rime and hoarfrost
Where are beautiful mountains’ white ghosts
which adorned my strange and flat sea:
the Po Plain waiting quiet for green life
dreaming any sap turgor of March?
Snow is now only an accident, chaos
really not virgin whiteness, it’s hitch
and I live into thoughts of old childs.
Lazy rest in the warmth of my bed.
Frebruary, 1st 2019
Photo by JB, 2018
Stock plant uses violence against silence
of the moderate stones that grasp greedy
tonight breaths of last sun on the hill.
Soon we’ll go back to Italy again
You’ll stay here, where you work, maybe for
a year that you’ll add to prior ones.
You’ll stay here to prepare your main hope
that is future and family: news
It is hard letting you could do it
like the wallflower lives on the stones
near the time marked there, on the tower
of the closed nice church. Never mind.
It is difficult standing apart,
son, and let you go, who knows…there
on each unknown road, you so, so new,
while we are old and heavy and closed
Our greatest strong prayer you are
you, together with your sister young.
May God help you to be, to be better
than I am, I who now line up rubble
Montferrier sur Lez, April, 4th 2018
Salicornia rounds up herself reddish
in the flat sweep expanse filled with
salt that denies greener bright hopes.
Far I see St.Marie and its church
Life is eaten by salt, wind and time
every year and for years, for a lot.
It sits tired in a flat backdrop
longing for something that could protrude
Then beyond Little Rhone, then forward
where more water this water receives,
earth is fading into a liquid nothing
wall or pass to so different worlds
At the seashore strong violence gives
reason to sky and sea to be roar
against rocks and the stones of the port
that protect boats and reflux and me
Wind and water run over impulses
to be still, to be calm and to stay
as if everything were just like no thing
and each place were the same everywhere
There was time when Saracens came here
from that water, now only a background.
The church was both for people and bones
of the saints a safe fortress with crenels
In the crypt Sara waits among hundreds
of lights and she is hope for the ones
that now own no more place or that keep
too much lands in their heart. Here I pray
St.Marie de la Mer, April, 3rd 2018
Photo by JB, 2018
Grass and shrubs here devour all the light
and become lust for life and for colours
while distil fragrance into the air:
helichrysum and dreamy remembers
Buds swell fast among the sharp thorns
ripping each winter’s hard and brown scales
yellow colours spread right all around
and the heather’s flesh is purple blood
Oak trees show hard and prickly, strange leaves
dark and small; they are head bent so close
to the ground. Valerian lights up as it’s a red
flame and rough bindweed is slithering down
In the clear afternoon a strange calm
envelops me; I look at myself
into limestones corroded by years.
We were sounds and too colors. Thus once
St.Guilhem le Desert, April, 4th 2018
Pic by JB 2018
It no longer exists, nor its rooms
nor its battlement towers. The castle
is reduced to a tourist fun chance,
its shaped stones were removed, dispersed
Still alive is the village; the white
rocks are cut and experienced again
while pine and holm trees are now the bush
calm and warm and dark green spread so much
The so powerful strength of a time,
the splendour of tapis and silk velvets,
the luxury and the glory are all faded.
They are only pale spectrum and far
As Baux does, I am often a ghost
made by hopes and illusions: past days.
I recycle my stones; they are old
as lost dreams, as a presence not true
I would like to be more, really alive
I should be what I am, what You want.
There’s a me in my shaped white heart
please discover it, please come to me
Baux, April, 3rd 2018
Photo by JB, 2018
I was twenty, oh God! Is it possible?
And I ran light across the Alps mountains
yet today a stone challenges my pride
and my feet and my mind shudder both
In the air Helichrysum and my
memories mix with rue that I sense
without see. I seek you there, below
I call you and I’m back: you are my wish
On the hill, in the scrub that wraps up
this limestone rock I go chasing times
by now lost, far away, looking for
resting boys at sunset, singing happy
Cobblestone white and flat make a path
as wide as the life history of saints[1]
who went through this Désert[2].
At the end of the world[3] we revive
Château du Verdun, April, 4th 2018
[1] Above all St. Guilhem (William), grandson of Charles Martel, famous Christian knight and cousin of the emperor Charlemagne. He is the hero of the Chanson de Guillaume.
[2] The Château du Verdun, or Giant Castle, is located near Saint-Guilhem-le-Désert.
[3] The very impressive Cirque de l’Infernet, known as located “au bout du monde“.
