Anna Lombardo

Statement

Of course, the way how every country, grounded on its own history, organizes itself and creates or develops its ideology has something to do with the ancient Roman practice: “divide et impera”. For centuries it works very well, even if when the struggles were directed toward the unity. Just think about Europa: a piece of land united under the dictatorship of “freedom”, but just for money or it is better to say, for those who hold the economical power. People, human beings, have no right to go from one place to another, as they wish or, as they have to, under forced circumstances (often create by the conflict between these economical forces). What seems to have completely disappeared from the human conscience is our humanity, the attention towards what is “real” and what is “Hollywood”. The virtual world together with the systematically destruction of critical capacity of generations after generations had brought all of us (the good ones and the bad ones) in this crazy and schizoid situation. Every-one against each other, every-one wishing the death or the punishment of the other (whether it is a country, a village, corporation, a category, a group: the Other, different from you, became The Enemy). Greece, Italy, Spain, now France and German as well, all under their own egotistical enchantment with the power. Poet and poetess are isolated and most likely come from Mars or some other alien planet (sometimes they make me believe that we really come from one of those distant planets). The de-responsibility of every person, the permanent delegation has brought us where we are.

Yes, I write poetry and I believe in poetry (the power of poetry) as well. As I use to say, poetry can speak to the hearts and to the souls better than bombs. But, Who is listening to the poet and poetess nowadays? I do and certainly many others do, but what if they are but a tiny minority?

7 Agosto

“Truth is the first casualty of war”, my friends.

I am not going to mention

Names or places

All are in your eyes

Whenever you open them

But are our eyes still windows of our soul?

“Truth is the first casualty of war”

I will not talk about the beginning

All know about the wonderful

Garden from where THEY

Kicked us away. The first lie

Lies in our embrace,

Covers flesh and blood

Heart and honey.

But what about the truth?

Is it like that bee

Going from flower to flower

Thrusting and sucking

All that is left

From the sealed book

of memory?

Is it like a wave

Washing our feet

Under the veiled moon

In front of the burning tower?

No talks no words

The understandable heart

Beating with its soul

Because the truth

Is the first casualty of war.

Is a war out there, then?

THEY don’t tell

Don’t trust our intelligence.

How can they?

The truth is the first casualty

Of our under-cover lives,

Under flags, under gods

Under money, under beauty,

Under and under

And under and under

Will the truth come without fear of the truth,

Written inside every tree, every fish, every star,

Every drops of blood, every stone, every mouth, every eye,

Every thought Every image Every word

Every heart

Every new-born soul?

7^th August 2014

What eyes did your death have?*

What eyes did your death have, my Bosnian brother?

What eyes did your death have, Tiranian mother?

And yours, sister from Sofia?

What eyes did death have for your father in Russia?

And what eyes will it have

for the babies of Chiapas? For the children of Tito?

For the children of Ireland? of Spain? of Italy?

What eyes did death have in the embassy of Lima?

What eyes did your death have

as you fell from the scaffolding?

What eyes did death have in Genoa? in New York, in Afghanistan? in Baghdad?

What eyes did death have in the theatre in Moscow?

What eyes in Beslan? at Guantanamo? in Madrid?

What eyes did death have in London? What eyes in Chittagong? in Athens?

What eyes does death have in Gaza?

Tell me, what eyes?

What eyes does death have?

What eyes? Tell me.

What eyes?

The same eyes

that have polluted

globalized

raped

deceived

gagged

catholicized

infantilized

prostituted

poisoned

sold

killed

bought

massacred

domesticated

my country,

yours.

Translated from Italian by Jack Hirschman

* From That Something that’s missing, BO, ed. Le Voci della Luna, 2009 a poem in progress.

MOQAWAMA, RESISTANCE

(a poem for Gaza)

The siren who enchants voyagers and does not drop bombs

the siren who becomes serenade on nights burning with love,

not flames in Gaza –will the children of Gaza

who bathe the fragile soil of their land with blood

ever know about her?

MOQAWAMA, MOQAWAMA, yes, RESISTANCE:

now it is an endless wail from wombs

ever more drained of their life-blood,

hands ever more poisoned by phosphorus,

mouths ever more grinding and twisted,

legs non-existent.

Resistance, yes, MOQAWAMA,

eyes seeking in vain

for a hope of bread and water at least

with time twisting and tangling

prowling like greedy Kronos

eager for the end.

MOQAWAMA, MOQAWAMA, yes, RESISTANCE.

Discant

1. I listen to the rustle of your footstep

measured by breeze of night breath

the chest goes up and full hands go down

along lying flat hips

dawning alive

in the spring of a verse

now here the time traces

flecks of joy over your face

and why question it?

The smile blossoms the burning answer

a warm tremor beside

when I touch your hand.

2. Over the sky

the human hell thunders in the meantime.

Mouths of houses open wide

bits of lives. Fixed

they bend down under the rage

of hostile times.

Foreign voices intertwine

in the near distance measuring

the same desperate

lullaby.

Now the pace conveys

the mad sound of escape.

The cities aren’t any more

my cities. They are only a tiny point

on your egocentric map –

your most updated one.

I fear

the lost spaces

between one syllable and the next

and how you leave them there

– soul of a cicada –

to sate themselves on sand.

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Anna Lombardo