To the moon

----------------------------------

Graceful moon, I remember

That – it’s been almost a year now – I would come,

Filled with anguish, to this hill to gaze at you:

And you were leaning over that forest

As you are doing now, lighting up all of it.

Yet your face appeared nebulous and trembling

To my lights, due to the tears wetting

My eyelashes, for troubled

Was my life: as it still is, nor will it change,

My dear moon. Yet that time’s memory

Helps me, and so does the recalling

Of my pain. Oh! How grateful does

The remembrance of past things occur

In the years of youth, when the course of

Hope is still long, whereas short is the course of memory,

Although the things remembered are painful, and the trouble continues!


A translation of Giacomo Leopardi’s Alla luna
(by Bruno Gullì)

U blues da giuvana

Vaiu o' campusantu
Arretu da signora Rosalía.
Vaiu o' campusantu
Arretu d'amica mia bella Rosalía
Ca quandu ieu su morta u vogghiu
A 'ncarcunu arretu i mia.

Vaiu all'ospiziu
Mu viiu a chidru vecchiu du zi' Brunu.
Vaiu all'ospiziu
Mu viiu a chidru vecchiu du zi' Brunu.
Quandu ieu mi fazzu vecchia e brutta
Volarría puru u viiu a 'ncarcunu.

L'ospiziu è tristi
E u marmu è friddu.
Ahi, l'ospiziu è tristi,
U marmu è friddu o' campusantu.
Pe 'mmia mu moru
Ca vecchia e brutta mu campu.

Chi po' fari na giuvana
Si no 'ndavi cchiù amuri?
Ahi, chi po' fari na giuvana
Si no 'ndavi cchiù amuri?
Vommi beni, papà, ca non bogghiu
U su nira i duluri.

traduzione di Young Gal's Blues, di Langston Hughes
-Bruno Gullí

U blues du menzu du 'mbernu

'Nto menzu du 'mbernu
Tutta a nivi 'nta terra.
'Nto menzu du 'mbernu
Tutta a nivi 'nta terra.
A viggilia i Notali
Mi faci sta guerra.

Non sacciu si rociu pecchì si 'ndi iiu
Ma mi dassau senza carvuna.
Non sacciu si rociu pecchì si 'ndi iiu
Ma mi dassau senza carvuna.
Mo, si 'nn'omu a 'na fimmana 'nci voli beni addaveru
N'a dassa i sti tempi, n'a faci u 'mpuzzuna.

Icía ca m'amava
Ma quant'è trapularu.
Icía ca m'amava
Ma quant'è trapularu.
Ma ieu vogghiu a idru
o pemmu mi sparu.

Vaiu u m'accattu nu bocciolu i rosa
E u chiantu arretu a porta,
Accattatimi nu bocciolu i rosa
Chiantatimmillu arretu a porta,
Nommu 'ndannu u vannu pe' hiuri
a putiha quandu su morta.


traduzione di Midwinter Blues, Langston Hughes
- Bruno Gullì

(mediterranea)

Dissolta la notte che grave
l'aveva nel grembo
trasale, sorpreso in un intimo sogno,
il chiaro paese appuntato
tra ulivi sul mare

E pare dirupi

San Francisco, circa 1987

Resurrection

Now I understand
When I left for Paris
With sadness in my heart
And pain all over my body,
With dead eyes
And pain in my soul,
Got there in the rain
And sun of September
Solitary and lonely
Got to rue Cels
And walked at night
To Montparnasse or Saint-Germain
And sometimes to the Seine.
I now understand
You had spoken to people,
Told everybody
To be gentle and brave
At the same time,
To let me feel
That it was still possible
The dream and the impossible
That life and love
And passion are stronger
Than the immense stupidity
Which kills us at times.
Then came the winter,
December and January,
As cold at rue Cels
As I had never felt before,
Yet I read, thought and dreamed
In the warmth of something
Only now I understand.
The red leaf that came through my window
In the middle of October.
Was it coming from you or was it you yourself
Coming in October and bringing into Paris
The benchless quiet of the Nevsky Prospect?
For it was then that I thought of Leningrad
As I now do of our child, still not around,
Yet already present, stretching her hands
Toward yours that hold the sun.
Child of war and light,
Of truth and darkness,
And of rebellion.
And you, streets of Paris,
You helped me too
As the voice that persuaded people
Also spoke to the walls
The gardens and sidewalks.
With the coming of Spring
We took walks from Porte de Vincennes
To the Bastille and sat in the sun
And looked at the water
Trying to open our souls.
I prepared myself
For the work in the fields,
Where I felt the infinite
Under my feet and the truth
Of thinking that
Cuts furrows into the soil of Being.
The ontological and cosmic change
We are conceiving,
Her hands, her being, her eyes
In the chiasm of our bodies,
The joy and the dance
Of its autonomous movement.
As I tell you of him
Who died early,
In your beautiful mountains,
Of his painful death,
I descend, fearless,
In the depths of your waters.
In your hands I become a rose,
And you, another rose
That I feel everywhere,
The finite and the infinite,
Our potentia and,
Of course, love.
I'm inside you
And he, whom you'd have loved,
Is inside me, and you are
Inside both of us.
For he came back,
His ashes have risen from the ocean,
Made a body of light
We've felt in our bed,
We've felt inside
As ground for her coming
Into the world.
When out of the ruins,
Out of the black soil,
He gave you his love,
He made possible
Your resurrection
And mine.

New York, February/March 2000
from Figures of a Foreign Land
San Francisco: Deep Forest, 2001

Preparazione e nascita

___________________

death is not this master.
-Emmanuel Levinas

Ho imparato che spesso
È doloroso il ritorno
E deve esserlo
Di noi stessi a noi stessi
Del lavoro al lavoro
Della vita e del tempo
All’assente presenza
Dell’atomico moto
Di tumulto e di caos
Del tempo che siamo:
nunc stans.

Ora assorto sedendo
Dentro i monti nei boschi
Di faggi e di pini
Che hanno visto i briganti
Contro stati nascenti
E signori oppressivi
Fra due mari chiarissimi
Spazio certo del nascere
Di violenza e tragedie
Ancora eterno
E sempre nuovo
Copre i tempi negati
Veloci e insieme lenti
Fra l’inizio e la fine.

Dirompente fiato
Immenso fuoco –
E noi? Poter restare
Abbandonati e nudi
Su questa terra cruda
A sognare una vita diversa?
Tempo diverso del nascere
Pluriverso del fare comune
Nell’insolitudine vera
Di terrene plenitudini
Dentro l’essere che è
E non può non essere
(mentre il nulla non è
Ed è necessario che non sia) –
Sognare una vita diversa?
Costruirla ogni volta
Fuori da questo immenso
Silenzio, nel giusto mezzogiorno
Di apparente stasi
Nelle notti stellate
Del probabile ritorno.


bruno gullì
new york, 2003-2006

Hölderlin’s Window

____________________________

“…and the philosophical light around my window is now my joy;
may I be able to keep on as I have thus far!”
-Friedrich Hölderlin
(letter to Boehlendorf, December 2, 1802)


Nothing but being remains
When
In the strong silence that doesn’t go
Unheard
The planes of time shift
And thought appears
In all its brightness:
The plane of memory
And the absent other, of the future.
But moments and modes
Of consolation are rare.
We anxiously seek
Thought on one side
The word on the other
In the void of time.
Quiet was earlier
Later there will be quiet.
Behind the window this new light
Exuberant with nature
In the warm evening
Finds us empty and cold
In the time of indifference
And revives us.
Perhaps a new thought
From the forest and mountains,
Perhaps in the crowded stations
Of forlorn cities
A young eternal face,
Ancient in its gaze,
Renews our passions, the fire
That lights the evening sky.
Yet simple are clothing and manners.
Here on the train going downtown
And losing itself into the woods
Set on fire by the new sun,
In the remote corners of the earth,
Talks are simple,
But high and real,
Conversations between pariahs and gods,
As to how war and blood and death
Reign allover.
The world sees no light.
Neither in the sweatshops in Pakistan
Or Thailand, nor those in New York
Or California does the void of time bring
New being. Laughter in Washington, London,
And the other capitals. Neither on the streets of La Paz,
Nor among the rubble in Baghdad is being nothing.
The laughter that calls itself democratic
Doesn’t see
The new coming freedom
That flows like lava down the mountains,
A river that breaks its banks.
The absolute and free being which is coming,
With a wide brow, comes from the future.
It carries with it immense spaces.
Like a new god, it crushes
Under its bare strong feet
Temples of a fake intelligence.
New cities arise everywhere in the world,
New centers of life. To the crescendo of festivity,
To the free coming and going of people
The unexpected gift of a genuine word
Adds itself, the presage, which is memory,
Of enlightenment.
To the usual window, tired, I return
Like he who due to a long absence
Through an exhausting journey
And a laborious search
Has lost his mental strength,
His bodily sense, to whom even rest
Appears to be action and effort.
Nor do you, thought, hide your presence.
Sleep is good in these circumstances.
It envelopes in the twilight the trembling walls
Of houses, the sound of our steps,
Solitude.
In this vortex
Of memory and of that which to equal status
Aspires, labor finds its elements.
Upon waking, the light of thought,
A new sun, floods eternal spaces.

Bruno Gullì (New York, June 2003)
Translated with Rosemary Manno
San Francisco and New York, June 2005