MELAMPYGE

 

Once upon a time there was

 a tabby cat called Melampyge

(so named after Casanova's dog)

 he was the only deceased 

when the San Marco's campanile

was doomed collapsing in 1902

Last night I dreamt myself petting

Its harlequin-fur at sunset just before

the tragedy came across la Serenissima

Rilke the poet -a black Homburg in hand-

was walking past me at a seraphic pace.

He whispered with a broad smile his last elegy

to some kind of elegant Comtesse

attired in blue organza and yellow gloves

Both blended slowly into the foggy backstreets

 Melampyge (podgy but nimble)

followed their ambling shadows

that scent the canals with violet hues.

I followed Melampyge toward the hidden

alleys off the beaten paths in Dorsoduro.

Suddenly Rilke looked back

and frosted his countenance 

with exactly the same blue eyes

of the cat glinting at me

just before running away

towards Piazza San Marco...

TITANIC'S COAL STOKERS

 

What were they singing 

the Titanic's coal stokers?

What did they choir along

in the steam engine while shoveling 

coal on end amid screams, 

expletives and sailor jokes?

What were they humming

larksome soaked in rills of sweat, 

ale and eating beef stew, plum

pudding like ravenous gannets?

Were they guided finally 

by Virgil as a lodestar

while walking through 

the last and eternal

flames of their lives?

What did they ever sing 

somewhere in the waiting room 

to the Other Side? 

I hear their hobnail boots tapping

a rag-time on the flooded floor.

REPARTO SUEÑO, 1975

 

A child is

(still not an exile

not a failed bard not 

a kind of eternal castaway)

 skipping ropes at sunset

in his native home patch

 called Sueño 

 

Reparto Sueño 

a child 

collecting silver caps 

of milk bottles earthworms

 blue marbles pick-up sticks 

like coins to pay for daydreaming..

another kid in the shade

of a flowering mango tree

still expects his father

from a far-off war

like a dog mourning

its master by his grave

A red sun hangs

on the sea-scented horizon

glittering like a goldfish

in a plastic bag.

                   ©,Celia Washington, 1983

HEMLOCK

 

Here I am in this garret

where no insulting light

could glimmer on

my endless guffaw

like taking a curtain call

and bowing down

to be acknowledged

by an audience of ghost-

like beauties

in broad morbidezza.

I drunk a swig of hemlock

along with the ghost of Keats 

and all of the sudden 

the blue-green waves of poetry

rushed at last into the most

beautiful words.

Oh love, stay there in the sunshine

 don't tarry long beside this gloom.

LACRIMAE RERUM

 

"Sunt Lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt" 

(Virgil, Aeneid, Book I)

Tears of things are gleaming

in the darkness of memories.

Camellia, cherry blossoms

fill up the ground of my mind.

Tears of things like dew drops

on the bones of springtime

picked clean by the moon.

(the memory 

lost by the moon

is mine)

Tears of things 

sparkling like stars,

the stars are tears

of the unknown

forever.

BESOS DE HIERBABUENA

“El mundo
-hoy levemente bélico-
Sin embargo huele
A besos de hierbabuena.
No conozco a esos labios
Que prodigan esos besos
Brujos(como diría un tango)
Sólo sé que rompen
En todos los vencidos
En todos los melancólicos
Como un oleaje lento y musical
Como un masaje que cura
Todo el dolor de vivir
O mentir.
Sólo sé que esos labios existen
Como uno tiene la certeza
De que hay agua en Marte
O nenúfares en la luna.
Dicen que Helena
Sólo era una sombra,
Que la verdadera Helena
Estaba en Egipto riéndose
de los verdaderos aqueos…
De ahí que mintiera el Bardo.
Yo no mentiré.
Yo no diré que besé a esos labios
Ni siquiera que existen.
Sólo sé que el mundo
-hoy levemente bélico-
Huele a sus besos de hierbabuena.
Y no a humareda de batallas o ambiciones.
Besos que curan cual esponja de vinagre
Todas las heridas visibles o invisibles.
Besos cuyo aroma adormece a las hienas
O enternece a los usureros.
Besos que uno puede contemplar
Como a un vuelo de golondrinas
O a un dibujo de Matisse…
Besos de hierbabuena,
Besos de hierba mojada por esa lluvia
Que ahora cae en Herculano
Poco antes de la erupción del Vesubio…
Poco antes de yo despertar…

BEES

 

When I was a child a dense swarm of bees

Poured into my mouth pure forest honey.

So it happened to Isidore of Seville

when he was just a nipper, legend says.

Everyone expected of me the eloquence 

Of a saint in Damask, a rethorician in Athens.

But nobody, not even my mother knew 

About those bees having already sipped 

into the white asphodels down in Hades  ,

into the delusive oleanders in Arcadia.

Nobody expected of me to be a poet,

a secret polisher of words, the amanuensis 

of the invisible...

I still can listen their humming on my lips.

(2006)