Imbiancato
Imbiancato
Original Text
Pier Giorgio Di Cicco, The Honeymoon Wilderness (Toronto: The Manfield Press, 2002): 115-16.
3for the sonata, for the now and again
4shimmer of sun that reinstitutes, reinvests.
5A note for the surprises I ask you to safeguard from me
6lest I marry them to my grief.
7Take care of me in my blindness.
8Teach me to say a prayer when I am out of words.
9Remind me that hope outlives the flesh.
10Give me that happiness I said would straighten me out.
11And if I have already had it, forgive me.
12I offer you these moments here in front of me
13where I am less beleaguered than I was --
14moments you gave to me. I am through being fed up
15with returning your gifts. I give you back everything
16you gave with the incarnate music you wanted
17wrapped around it.
18What you want with such music is beyond me,
19the lace of tears, the jewelled warbling,
20the hurts hosannaed on a moonlit
21night of stars,
22the scream at death, beaten into faith so simple
23it wound around a girl's head like a ribbon.
24I admit finally, my footsteps are not my own.
25I surrender, as I did to all great things, to the plausible
26fabrication of your hand.
27I dream of little cowboys, many of them,
28all happy to find a campfire at night with the increased
30I will walk today into the empty sojourn
31of my life and look forward to the nearest stream
32and that nocturnal conversation between us
33where I offer you my tears
34and you will raise them like a river between
35stars and stars.
36There's not much more this heart would
37care to divine.
38This note of thanks I place somewhere at your feet,
39a man on the planet.
Notes
1] Imbiancato: 'whitened' (Italian). Back to Line
2] Cf. Cicco's poem, "Cowboy on Horse in Desert." Back to Line
29] whippoorwill: bird, the noctural goatsucker, common in northeastern America. Back to Line
Publication Start Year
2002
RPO poem Editors
Ian Lancashire
RPO Edition
2003
Rhyme
Special Copyright
Copyright Pier Giorgio Di Cicco 2002