Corso Italia 7
Rivista internazionale di Letteratura – International Journal of LiteratureDiretta da Daniela Marcheschi

(Letter. Postscript. Farewell)
[di Alberto Guareschi]
LETTER
Ariel, to tell you everything,
this was the project:
to draw up the chronicles
and let you know (at every step
I thought about the words,
they were like kites
facing sudden disappearance
into the ocean) –
always beginning all over again,
never carrying on,
years squandered in gazing
at passing clouds,
moon phases
(from hotel rooms
postcards to friends,
readings of Li Po and other masters) –
collected as time passed
earth maps, notes
for tomorrow, sheets
covered with signs,
boxes full of puzzles
and threads to be unraveled
for the final canvas (as a child
I listened to my mother
intent on her chrochet:
she alone could untie
certain tangles) –
had I been able, at least,
to commit messages
with fragments of the plot
to carrier-pigeons,
whereas I lost the thread,
Ariel my dear,
zigzag with my nose
from one dream to the other
(feeling as walking
pendulum-wise like that funny
Monsieur Hulot on holiday
seen in the movie) –
POSTSCRIPT
Total serenity
of dreamed landscapes,
the fantasy at full speed
on flying carpets,
with new territories to explore
in space and time
(omnipresent the flow of the Notturni,
that “small hand”
free from any force of gravity) –
all as foretold
by Arianna’s tarots:
contemplation and Tao,
imagination only,
no action, no doing –
a project diluted along the branches
and the too many branches of branches,
never safe landing-places,
sure passages
uncorrupted by doubt,
between enchanted gardens
and the crash of all chimeras:
always and everywhere
just ink stains only,
no picture
(stretching my fingers out
I had the impression
of playing with soap bubbles:
at sunrise everything disappeared,
farewell you beautiful,
variegated butterflies,
light ideograms,
puppets and theatres)
FAREWELL
Flying carpets confined
in the oblivion room of previous life,
now departure to lands
void of moon phases and seasons,
night day and dusk
all the very same thing –
impossible to foretell other letters,
messages from silence,
from when and where
(in Song from the O-mei, between other lines,
I read: “Boarded in the evening
from the jetty at Ching-chi
bound to the Three Gorges.
Thinking of you far from my eyes now
I go down to Yu-chow…”) –
a thin slip of sand behind me,
North Star high on the line
of the horizon –
Alberto Guareschi (Parma, 1940) lives in Lucca since almost forty years. As an executive and then director of some state and private industrial groups he has travelled extensively, not only for professional reasons, in various countries and continents, thus enriching the range of his cultural experiences and interests. In 1976 he was among the founders of Pratiche Editrice, a member of its literary board and CEO. As an author he has published three books of poetry: Verso Cipro(Guanda, 1963), Teatrini del signor Egli (Diabasis, 2004, with an introduction by Roberto Carifi) and Stella polare (Passigli, 2016) where the poems in this issue are included. Notable his activity as an editor and translator, particularly for Guanda that published in 1989 the first Italian edition of the German classic by J. P. Hebel, Tesoretto dell’Amico di casa renano. Guanda published also his selection of F. Hoelderlin’s poetry, L’arcipelago e altre poesie (1965), the translation of Nietzsche’s Ditirambi di Dioniso (1967) and of Hermann Hesse’s novels Nel chiosco di Pressel (introduction by G. Zampa) and Giorni di luglio (1990). By Tony Duvert he has translated Récidive (foreword by Guido D. Bonino, Pratiche Editrice, 1978) and Quando morì Jonathan (Savelli, 1981). Other poetry translations (from Georges Bataille, Sarah Kirsch and H. M. Enzensberger) appeared in the Eighties on “Il Raccoglitore”, bi-monthly cultural magazine of Gazzetta di Parma, and on “Rassegna Lucchese”. In 2008 Diabasis published, based on his project and edited by A. Niero, Balcony and other poems (with an introductory essay by Iosip Brodskij) of the Russian poet and friend Evgenij Rejn.
– See more at: https://www.olioofficina.it/2017/01/per-ariele/#sthash.Y5BpAtbC.dpuf
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