Talking chairs: Voices for the future of the planet

Wayfarer stop You’ll repose here Thou too shalt couch thy limbs Linger with me, sit Stay, whether night or day I’d like your sitting here to benefit you

I know, you’d like to go on, you’re rushed, called by all, allured, winked at from a distance, but have faith, even seated here the Sun can flood you, the rose’s velvet spur you, a glass of wine intoxicate you

Linger with me, pose after pose, Wayfarer repose, here you can calmly rattle off the grains of each beloved, yearned- for verse. And, in the meantime, spot their mother-of-pearl gleam, sea memory

Trust that this seat was known even to Machado “there is no road, you make the road as you walk… blow after blow, verse after verse…” I want to tell you the road can be sketched, made, even with the thinking of it somewhat restfully, as it gains impetus, to picture it as it stands, pausing here today comfortably seated on this chair, lending ear to how much I’m telling you, my welcome friend, my precious guest ready to leave again and, all the more precious, because interim and ready for new swerves, for setting off, merely passing through, lent to me, only for as much as is enough to hear me a little

I know, I know, you’re thinking back to your school chair, your naked knees, your falls, your bruises. Your mother who said each time “do you think you’re an apple perhaps, coming home bruised?” Her sharp way to squeeze out your laugh and apply disinfectant then bandaid. Your mother, make room a little today for Her to sit here too. smile at her and gratefully touch your now-uncut knees.

I know, you’re thinking back to that traitorous fold- up timber cinema chair, to the smoke in your eyes, to the sweet girl sitting beside you, to her face watching you, you enthralled more by Her than the rolling film, to the kiss you dreamed of giving her, to the ceaseless rain in the street that seemed even to enter the theatre. Make room today for that sweet girl too, as you ponder where in the world She lives today, and above all how you could have forgotten her all these years. Hold yourself a little on this chair, Wayfarer, there’s room for Her too, close your eyes and cleanse them of smoke, of rain, of tears.

Repose, Homo viator, pilgrim, trust you’re beside the chimney in your grandfather’s house. Open yourself, though you’re by no means a nut, and show yourself your nature, munch on your thoughts, one by one, think back to them, pledge to love yourself a little.

And resume, refreshed, your walk, my interim guest, my wayfarer friend. What’s important is to have met, and it wasn’t so sure then, so predictable. This is the power of verse, of each verse and of a chair, this one. Who would’ve thought?

Here a planetoid me.

Here a planetoid me invisible blue, who does not stick, to introduce itself with back turned keyed up shut down, to then gain on itself, and in sight of good God’s monologue eye, on upright feet to present itself a peer united, and say: Yes I’m clever, I have been since kindergarten, wooden squares of life, where hands folded and feet to the side, I found myself a contemplative woman. Before the eye of good God she rejoiced then, her myopic eyes nimbly lowered, and blessing feet, to ask him, Why do you not speak and not tell us what you truly think of us, of my fate? If I’ve sinned if there near the eyes of the spring where I resided (and you lived) you think it right someone hidden introduces themself and returns, blessing us to say, You’ll pay! Glory rains on you the smaller, repeated great and fatherly God from locks to uncurled ringlets. Ask nothing anymore more, do not. Blessing is the hanging wisteria that March-evening-window-side drinks its round words prayers, of when, as a fearful child uncurled there, I recovered you in intimate wait for life.

If God loves me I write and if I do not write I die, lurch worse, and until evening clash my very modest prayers which, like morsels of bread, stay shut there nourished with not water but a stagnation that bloats and accompanies them can also kill them spoil them, make them the soft inner-bread or kernels unfragranced by evening. God’s eye admired her small and meek, a wilful child, but her shadow painted a wall there in front dug from abject dirt, pulled down by bindweed.

Believe no hurricanes of past love, marriage filled with lasting happiness with the world, arrange the cage opening background where someone entombs their eye. Go muffled, go prove yourself intact, tiny on the evening’s uproar impression, on river-pebbles on evening-gusts, outside of circle and walls - of upturned beguines, your evening.

Dear being

My dear being, We reached our meeting Sit here let’s rest Our souls We’ve no eyes For each other Nor skin’s touch

And I want to caress you with voice alone reach your pure soul with sound I’ll sing you a dirge That not even I know Let’s go by hand at sounds of a life that’s moulded each of our bodies face and mouth ready to emit kisses whispering Let’s love each other Brother sister so nothing Else is really left When life’s wave comes back distant. What’ve we lived You and I That’s simar What guides us to this time Only now ours? Oh, all joy And pain up to now For this meeting Of apparent strangers What happened to you That I can’t come to know What did I experience That you can’t Feel? We’re here together To be

So my love reaches you across the modulated sound of a body modelled on its every moment of life like a creator’s work. Do you feel it ?

When you come to my land

When you come to my land

I will know you because on this seat you listen to me.

A faceless listening, made from words.

Now we all live the same

bereft of the joy in encounter, in embrace.

But words have a strong taste

are all we can give one another.

My voice comes from an ancient sea-bound country,

great Rome’s emporium.

Honourary ships arriving from more parts of the world

to bring provisions, fabrics, marbles, animals.

The emperors’ Baiae was near.

Here were the most beautiful women,

here were born the most thrilling love affairs.

Yes, love, the force that makes you feel alive.

We should return to loving the other

to understand ourselves, to protect us and this land

this wonderful gift we destroy.

But land forgives and we change,

if we become worthy of being human.

I know not who you are listening to me,

man or woman, remember my words :

we’ll construct a new, better world.

When you come to ancient Puteoli

as soon as you say you’ve arrived I’ll understand

that this sad time is gone away.

I’ll be able to meet you half way, embrace you because you,

one day, seated on this seat listened to me.

VACANT SEAT

Then there is nothing but the sound of their looking

Billy Collins is right: there are chairs sat on by no-one — chairs devised to be mused on one by one blossoms and trees, boulevards and heights —

and whoever put them there mused on couples — two here, two there: double vision often survives only as intention — without the care to actually use.

Is this not how life declines? To plan without pause all that is absent — and to give shapes and names: pew or rather bench or rather stool or rather recliner —

yet neglecting their substance: we’re made of chairs’ same matter which like us consumes the bite of hunger, contemplative and alone in a residence.  SEDE VACANTE

Then there is nothing but the sound of their looking

People, I belong to you. Street, I belong to you. I am the sky petrified by a volcanic plume. I am the lake where the bowels of the earth have set their codes. I am destiny, trapped in the hands of another god who is not me. I am she who ordered the volcanoes to be silent or to speak. Even the moon’s soul arms its legions to appease me.

Deliver us from evil amen amen bed turns to dust amen water slides into earth amen hands slide over eyes. We want a prophecy of light in the name of the Mother, the Daughter and the Spirit of the Earth we want the mother of the rain beyond the mystery there is no war, only the dumbstruck gaze of the heart.

Why in the sky was there fire? We went beyond and beyond the sky, to Andromeda, the elected galaxy my mother's motherland, a great free nebula, where we were conceived in her word-logos. Impetuous women looked on, warriors and Amazons without violence, without desire for man’s dominion, unlike men. Positive energy and power Rearing before the armour of all the exclusions, now dissolved. The drum calls, and called us. Teach me, drum, the initiation ceremony of the third millennium, the way, the technique of the shaman. Teach me how to master myself, mistress, without dominating, teach me where, how I heal, how to heal.

We continued on to Andromeda flying in a strange fog. The foremothers gathered around us to ask. As if we were them. As if I were the foremother. To flee, to flee. It almost seemed to desecrate that place-non-place. Then, in search of our own key-place, of my own key-symbol, then ...

I saw HER/HIM a witch-warlock shaman woman, Wo-Man, to put it in the way of poets I saw the long white mask A with only three black slits, two eyes, an O-shaped mouth a huge, long, white skirt maybe a sceptre, no, a pin, no, a wand with a knob on top, no, a staff, which seemed to speak like forefathers with horns, a crescent moon towards the sun and the moons and then the other foremothers circled around us again S/HE spoke an incomprehensible tongue of grunts and sounds S/HE unapproachable, there behind and within the answers to our questions all white and white now, but without fog.

And then you sucked us back, into the circle of fire, among the clouds, into the wind, up to the stone canopy where we started out and we each felt called by name "Come back, come back", to the beat of the drum, to the beat of the heart, T’, t’, t’, t’m, t’m, t’m, time, time, in time in a new space in the heart and here, in woman and here, yes, on the earth, with the drum, alive, and yes, it was better “there”, to come back crossing the fire of heaven, and then home, galaxy, big bang. From the centre of the circle, from the visible To the invisible, coming back in the blink of an eye, to come back there, here, knowing how, knowing how and where, knowing ...

I am woman who heals (me) I am woman who heals (the world) I am woman who heals (she says) Woman who teaches Woman who rediscovers Woman who regenerates woman who regenerates herself I am energy woman
sun woman goddess-woman god-woman mother and daughter woman who goes and returns

Lidia Popolano (Italy) Translation by

Screams

Rather than observing a world that honestly lies and hides as it masks and coarsely laughs

oh how honestly and coarsely it smiles and squeals, gnashing its arms!

but you scream over chortles and mourn them as you clasp them and never are full and solo wayfare with mounting despair

how could I not hear you?

Did I listen perhaps to my own, of the screams? listened to noises and nothing else knew that silence and tender inattention are the only way to reach each other but still knew not what I was not or what the obscene sound had to tell me

you scream no longer, you fall silent my cherished poem and let another deeper cheerier voice speak

together we seek inattentive brinks of time lopsided happinesses to love actualities able to grasp the present when there’s no longer anything to lose but silence

and to brave the north-westerly able with half-closed mouth and eyes wild with passion

for the fool, poisoned happiness for the sage, their lot, unhappiness for us, needless north-westerly.  Urla

Invece che osservare il mondo che mente sinceramente e si nasconde mentre dissimula e ride sguaiatamente

oh quanto sinceramente e sguaiatamente sorride e stride, digrignando le braccia!

ma tu urli sopra le risate e ne piangi mentre le abbracci e mai sei sazia e vaghi solitaria con disperazione crescente

come ho potuto non sentirti?

Ascoltavo forse le mie, di urla? ascoltavo rumori e null’altro sapevo che il silenzio e la tenera distrazione sono l’unico modo per raggiungersi ma ancora non sapevo ciò che non ero né che cosa aveva da dirmi l’osceno rumore

ora non urli più, mia adorata poesia taci e lasci parlare altra voce più profonda e consolante

insieme cerchiamo orli di tempo distratti felicità sguincie amare realtà che sanno afferrare il presente quando non c’è più nulla da perdere se non il silenzio

e affrontare il maestrale sanno con bocca socchiusa e occhi folli di passione

allo stolto, la felicità avvelenata al savio, in sorte, l’infelicità a noi, il superfluo maestrale.