Three unpublished poems by George Wallace - Tre poesie inedite di George Wallace (nota di lettura di/reading note by Sergio Daniele Donati)
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FIRST BIRD TO SING
first bird to sing
last bird to land
I hear you through
shuttered windows
hear you with my
shuttered heart
I feel your wings
against my breast
your scissored wings
my wicked sadness
first bird to sing
last bird to land
this sad song
of possibilities
trembling a little
like a flower petal
lost to the garden
bird without horoscope
bird without history
bird without hesitation
to stay your wings
I sing to you
first bird to fly
last bird to land
I will follow you
beyond the oleander
through olive groves
as far as the Arno
where the black line
of tall cypresses
bids you go
last bird to land
I hear you through
shuttered windows
hear you with my
shuttered heart
I feel your wings
against my breast
your scissored wings
my wicked sadness
first bird to sing
last bird to land
this sad song
of possibilities
trembling a little
like a flower petal
lost to the garden
bird without horoscope
bird without history
bird without hesitation
to stay your wings
I sing to you
first bird to fly
last bird to land
I will follow you
beyond the oleander
through olive groves
as far as the Arno
where the black line
of tall cypresses
bids you go
______
ONE LIFETIME AT A TIME
you will stop loving me the same way
you learned to love me – wordless at first,
then one word at a time, one phrase
at a time, one sentence one paragraph
one chapter one language, one lifetime at
a time (one day, one day) you will stop
loving me the same way you learned
to love me – wordless at first, then
one word at a time, one phrase
at a time, one sentence one paragraph
one chapter one language, one lifetime
at a time -- you will have forgotten
completely how to talk to me,
forgotten completely how to listen,
forgotten completely how to lie to me,
to love me (to love me) one word at a time,
one phrase at a time, one sentence one paragraph,
one lifetime at a time -- forgotten completely
how to love me, wordless again, one day
(one lifetime at a time)
______
AS YOU WOULD LOVE SO I WOULD LOVE
consider the low sweep of rain that punishes and ignites the living surfaces, new flesh, senses newly emerged, skin and membrane woken, and the imagination set on fire; an augury, a warning, a sign; the softness of sand to nascent paws, how sharp the stones; so much to love so much to mistrust, one eye on the cliff face, the other turned inwardly;
as you would love, so I will love
consider the shadow of paradise, the shadow and current of sea; consider the wild creature rising from its knees, just emerged from the watery ocean, amid the low moan of the rolling waves, stung with wonder and narrow-eyed;
as you would love, so I will love
free, as you would be free,
free, and we will be free
so terrible to mistrust everything, yet natural, to be vexed, bamboozled, infatuated with the smell of the wind, the movement of cloud, sour gulls crying;
consider, consider, how solemn the long green horizon, all the tentative, small creatures crawling out of the sea -- myself among them -- towards the gods or none of them.
free, free, as you would be free,
free, and we will be free
as you would love so i would love
free, and we will be free
as you would love so i would love
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BIOBIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES / NOTE BIOBIBLIOGRAFICHE
GEORGE WALLACE. NYC USA. Writer in residence at Walt Whitman Birthplace, author of 42 chapbooks of poetry, editor of NYC FROM THE INSIDE (Blue Light Press), and creator of Poets Building Bridges: An International Triangulation Project. Music albums with his poems as lyrics include Sappho's Little Boat (Omonoia Circus, Athens Greece), Plains of Po (Ana Spasic/Francesco Paladino, Donemus, Netherlands), Nowheresville (Poetrybay Creative, NYC), Blowing Through Secaucus (Poetrybay Creative, NYC) Resurrection Song (Poetrybay Creative, NYC).
GEORGE WALLACE, New York City, USA. Scrittore residente presso la Walt Whitman Birthplace, è autore di 42 raccolte poetiche, curatore di NYC FROM THE INSIDE (Blue Light Press) e ideatore del progetto internazionale Poets Building Bridges: An International Triangulation Project.
Ha collaborato alla realizzazione di album musicali in cui le sue poesie sono utilizzate come testi, tra cui:
- Sappho's Little Boat (Omonoia Circus, Atene, Grecia)
- Plains of Po (Ana Spasic/Francesco Paladino, Donemus, Paesi Bassi)
- Nowheresville, Blowing Through Secaucus e Resurrection Song (tutti prodotti da Poetrybay Creative, NYC).
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CRITICAL NOTE / NOTA DI LETTURA
di/by SERGIO DANIELE DONATI
When George Wallace, an American poet who certainly needs no introduction from us, accepted our invitation to share three completely unpublished texts for their exclusive first publication on these pages, the emotion was truly immense.
For if there is one thing that must be said about this great poet, it is that encountering his writing is always, for the readers, an experience that leaves them changed—never quite the same as before.
Having the opportunity to read poems never before published makes this poetic journey all the more compelling, like venturing into unexplored territory.
As you will see, these are three partially distinct writings, differing in content and signification, as well as in expressive and rhetorical-metrical lines.
For this reason, we present them in their original language, without daring a translation.
The first one, FIRST BIRD TO SING, is a poem with melancholic tones, yet expressed through a pressing rhythm that embraces rhetorical figures of enumeration and repetition. These create a background effect—almost like a relentless drumbeat—powerful and insistent, with short lines and tightly spaced breaks.
The dialogue and promise of companionship the poet offers to the wounded, fragile bird, in a way, reverses the usual relationship between poetry and nature, suggesting that poetry might be the first to inspire the flight of a wounded nature.
A delicate poem, then, whose delicacy — almost paradoxically — is shaped by incisive and sharp versification, a play of opposites that accompanies the reader to that line of cypresses in the final verse, whose evocative content (as well as the reference to the Arno) is certainly evident to all.
The second poem, ONE LIFETIME AT A TIME, truly leaves the reader speechless, precisely because it speaks of the end of love through subtraction.
Here rhetorical figures of repetition and enumeration are present too, but they seem to serve a different function than in the previous poem—a function of contrast, in a sense.
It takes a lifetime to learn the vocabulary of love, the Poet seems to suggest — and another lifetime to forget it, to unlearn it, but not through rupture: rather, as an act of mere forgetting, predictable and foreseen by the one destined to endure it.
We forget how to love one lifetime at a time. Love does not end... it halts through the oblivion of the right words that might contain its construction.
This is stated as a law, perhaps a prophecy — something inevitable and true, even in its inescapable drama.
The third composition, AS YOU WOULD LOVE SO I WOULD LOVE, projects us into other expressive worlds, with alternating passages of long, image-rich writing and quasi-refrains, in which the poet explores an intriguing relationship between freedom and love.
In this splendid text, another alternating relationship emerges—between effort/difficulty and projection toward a future perceived (or perceivable) as different and, in a sense, simple and expressible, precisely because it is cast in the future tense.
We are truly grateful to the Poet for this immense gift of three poems of the highest expressive and thematic value, and confident that for our readers, it will be an equally precious gift to read and appreciate them.
Sergio Daniele Donati
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Quando George Wallace, poeta americano che non ha certo bisogno di nostre presentazioni, ha accettato l'invito a farci avere tre testi completamente inediti e in prima pubblicazione esclusiva su queste pagine, l'emozione è stata davvero enorme, perchè se c'è una cosa che del grande poeta non si può evitare di dire è che l'incontro con la sua scrittura è sempre, per il lettore, qualcosa che non lo lascia mai come prima di averlo incontrato.
Avere poi di fronte a sé poesie mai pubblicate rende questo viaggio poetico ancora più avvincente, come quando ci si addentra alla scoperta di territori inesplorati.
Come vedrete sono sono tre scritture parzialmente differenti tra loro, sia per contenuti e significanti che per linee espressive e retorico-metriche e, per questo motivo, ve le sottoponiamo in lingua originale senza azzardare una traduzione.
La prima, FIRST BIRD TO SING, è una poesia dai toni malinconici espressi, tuttavia, con ritmi incalzanti che non disdegnano figure retoriche elencative e di ripetizione, che creano un effetto di sottofondo, quasi un tamburo battente, assai potente, e versi brevi con accapo molto serrati.
Il dialogo e la promessa di accompagnamento che il poeta fa all'uccello ferito e fragile, in un certo senso, poi, inverte l'usuale rapporto tra poesia e natura, dichiarando la possibilità che possa essere la prima ad ispirare il volo di una natura ferita.
Poesia dunque delicata, ma la cui delicatezza. quasi paradossalmente, si crea attorno ad una versificazione incisiva e netta, con un gioco degli opposti che accompagna il lettore sino a quella linea di cipressi dell'ultimo verso, i cui contenuti evocativi (così come il richiamo all'Arno) sono certamente evidenti a tutti.
La seconda poesia, ONE LIFETIME AT A TIME, lascia davvero senza parole, proprio perchè della fine di un amore per sottrazione parla.
Anche qui le figure retoriche di ripetizione ed elencazione sussistono ma, pare, svolgono una diversa funzione rispetto alla precedente, una funzione anche di contrasto, in un certo senso.
Ci vuole una vita ad imparare il vocabolario dell'amore - sembra suggerirci il Poeta - e sempre una vita a dimenticarlo, a disimpararlo, ma senza strappo, come atto di mera dimenticanza, prevedibile, e previsto, da chi è destinato a subirlo.
Ci si dimentica come amare una vita alla volta, l'amore non finisce...si ferma per oblio delle giusta parole che possano contenerne la costruzione.
E questo viene enunciato come una legge, forse una profezia, come qualcosa di inevitabile e vero, pur nella sua drammaticità senza scampo.
La terza composizione, AS YOU WOULD LOVE SO I WOULD LOVE, ci proietta in altri mondi espressivi, con alternanze di scrittura molto lunghe e dense di immagini e quasi-ritornelli in cui il poeta declina una interessante relazione tra libertà e amore.
In questo splendido testo, si declina poi, nell'alternanza tra breve e lungo anche un'altra relazione alternata, quella tra fatica/difficoltà e proiezione su un futuro percepito (o percepibile) come diverso e, in un certo senso, semplice ed enunciabile, proprio perchè declinato al futuro.
Siamo davvero grati al Poeta per questo dono immenso di tre poesie dall'altissimo valore espressivo e di contenuto e certi che per i lettori sarà un altrettanto prezioso dono poterle leggere e apprezzare.
Per la Redazione de Le parole di Fedro
il caporedattore - Sergio Daniele Donati
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