LAGO MAGGIORE - sketch

Of wry peasant stories and induced dreams
Of historical meetings between powerful leaders
Of a boy lost one night 1944 mistaken for a spy
being shot at as he crossed the bridge home
Of tripe and spaghetti mixed for supper before Il Duce
left alone to eat and dream up more crazy schemes
Of near misses with the Borromeo’s
Of near death experiences beneath the shallow waves at Cannero
Of one lung and a thousand stair climb
Of Amperes monolith pumping energy into Piedmont
playing electric atoms off against each alp
Of clichés and stereotypes broken by the season’s changes
and the necessity to go with them
Of sleep deprivation in a quiet lakeside room
Of metal played on metal as a source of spiritual harmony
Of sleep now it is silent
Of naked freedom
Of a camp bed
Of humour and comedy above all else
Of canopied fishing kayaks competing to be the brighter
Of strange silhouettes in the center of the lake that carry on playing
Of keeping your nose clean and your eyes peeled
Of distribution of logs on an autumn night, each correct place
Of meaningless words and translations in a thousand languages
Of folktales replayed
Of each ridge of Monte Rosso down to the waterline
Of words that will become mainstays, prayers,
passwords, codes for new form
Of hugging Arabs close to the war memorial turning their backs
on strict devotion, overwhelmed by nature’s mirror they gaze on
Of streets named after writers, artists, politicians, and nobodies
Of heroes and villains in one shell
Of oily fish and turpentine
Of cleaning the late afternoon with potato skins
Of these unrelated things in the eye of the clock
Of silver omens in the day, of wooden ones at night
Of the argument of the retreating communist
Of the spine turned outward
Of borders close at hand
Of one hundred mallards flying west
Of pretend towns on the other side that only come out at night
Of partners in crime, love and adventure
Of the thousand yard stare
Of two books with no covers
Of a crooked hand
Of brandy and Bacchus imitators
Of palaces built and lost to the previous century
Of electronic alarms and half-brothers with wiry grey beards
Of rainstorm palms
Of egg albumen and of cormorant castles
Of doorways into nothingness
Of the edge of things: jetties seeking for some place
Of blood dried on cloth and scientist priests
whose propaganda seduced all
Of orchid churches
Of pale open walls like the flesh of men and women
Of pirate heads and coconuts and Popeye paintings
Of forgotten striped sun beds
locked away in rows at the close of season
Of idle drawbridges and dinghies upside down
and of the lone rower making the length mid-water