The rustling carillon of incertitude
Spills its sugar
Like the warmest wind reverse
Blows from Rome to Cairo
Awakening the dormant
Phantom limb
Longing to run free
Longing to be rid of silence
And unacknowledgment
Longing for the dread to cease
Longing to at last raise its hand
And for once
Give an answer
As the potentates
Meet in dark chambers
And TV sets blare blood
At the humanitarian distribution
Food line spilling the guts of humans
As the nuclear cores hide under mountains
Like Pharaohs wrapped in their slumber
For three thousand years
And more to come
Would love a fugue, the respite
Of taking off their tight, stinky bandages
And spread the balm laying right there at their side
Within the bird vessel next to the slave girl skull
Would love to shake off the pyramid
Rejoice in its collapse
Like a tower that has received the straw
That broke its back
And in these famished days
In these dog days of a civilization
Fretful and teetering over the brink
Would be ecstatic to sprout wings
Free like the ibis,
Flap its wings for once
Out of stony immobility
Feel the lift
The inebriation of the eagle as it soars
Feel the buoyancy of the balloon
That lifts off away from the flames
Leaving behind
This laden species
Leaving behind the blushing of history
Soaring now with the lightness of clouds
Where the keys of Ludovico’s piano
Take them under his nimble fingers
To avoid the strictures
To avoid the structures
And breathe
Finally breathe
Three breaths
Of relief as the strings
And the percussions climax.
Pina Piccolo, Imola, 28 June 2025
An attempt to awaken the Muse, an experiment, writing while listening to Ludovico Einaudi’s “The Tower” , for whose music I am forever grateful.
Cover image: Graphic art by Irene De Matteis.