america

perhaps one day
on my doorstep
i would pick up a baby 
wrapped up in swaddling clothes
and hold it in my arms
across
a minefield
	brown leaves in the swimming pool
	a surface to glide on
	to the spring-board which is waiting
	for the explosion of a thousand sponge
slippers-past the trees
a suburban house is the prize
with the backyard and the neighbors in white
pants, sitting at their table and very polite
	it's not enough
	to go back home
	give the door two turns of the key
	look at dusk
	every night




my father was driving
my mother was peeling the apples
i was looking outside the window
in a fancy

	along the letter C-with sharp left-leaning serifs
	at the truncated edges-memory was missing
	at twenty the first turn at thirty the second one
	the rest was fading away in the blindfolded eyes

my father would teach us croatian on the beach
vuk was a slow learner he liked the automatic watch
erika had the dinghy but vuk would lose his swimsuit
every time we pulled him up and suzanne was swimming
il y a une meduse that's how he managed to touch her leg
i'd stomp on the ants in the grass where a cicada lied desiccated

	i was always pushing down my soul with my elbows
	like i did with my suitcase full of books




the valley was falling into darkness
while time was being counted
in excess so that we could hear the silence
slice the temples clean
one could wheeze off the fear
amidst painful gasps
or look for a telephone booth
and then go back in the car
and smash the neighbors' windows




the doors of the art noveau elevator
did not close very well
in via valfré january 17 2004
i was sweating in my coat
the ground could disappear
the elevator was going up with a slant
floors were swirling on the sides
old double facing doors
turin perspiring death-as always

i was a guest sitting on the window-sill
with my feet dangling
my mother had thrown herself out the window for years
but the clotheslines
were her safety net




as a child i used to walk
on the airplanes' wings
sometimes i would put my arm
in the meatgrinder on the right-handside wing- 
unperturbed, my father
would pull me back by my suspender
and close the window

airplanes crash into houses
before they can soar
they go across the lofts-
on the ground floor
when the doorkeeper is cutting
a slice of cake
the passengers lower
their windows rapidly
to catch some fresh air
over mongolia




the fathers would open their hands
upon the ruffled braids
of daughters going to college
who would lean from the window
with their broken hairpins
-and the freeze-out would go through
their dusty hair
their muffled ears
their frost-bitten fingers on the temples
-neurons got paralized

snow was falling upon the hill
with a drilling noise-
the soul was immune to everything-
while we, quite imbalmed,
would stare at the microsurface
-spread with fat free milk and corn flakes-
only to face the frozen cigarette butts
half-buried in the white below the window

and to think that ten years later
those would have beeen the best years
of this tiny life of complaints
just when we used to warm up the ice with our breath
in the air filled with the howls of a wolfpack
running up the hill of sleet




if texas' coast would open itself on the shores of the lago maggiore
i could go out and sit on the benches
gaze into a closed space and a splinter of sky
and not the ten thousand kilometers between the continents

i sharpen my pencils hoping they will turn into oars
i can peel them away for years and years while i am sitting and writing
i will always say the wrong things to my mother on the phone