Vladimiro  Rinaldi


APOESIDI


all the stars are larvaeshadows waiting
first little girls then redlights that burn
plumb on men who sleep
like rags on cartons
over gratings of the station basements

in melting tars of the summer in love
the carboned blue eyes
of blonde tender maria at the marana*
only a butterfly she cannot
and spurting on the stucco steps the marbles
that strike and sing

september is caresses at the breast

behind the shutters runs the purple
blood of the lymph

from prison-slum to slum-prison

bastard open the cell it's time
to free kites over
fields of bloody water-melons
mouth to mouth with the loved comrade
as the star that filters the walnut trees
and together with the leaves
how sad will fall

at the lot with the pozzolana walls
blackberries blackberries echoed
the old curved woman
over the wooden buckets
for ten liras i'll give you a cone

sweetness of the autumn enchantment
slashes the vein of stars
and drips through the oblique petticoat
- little neighbourhood water pump rinse
the petticoat of the innocence her

The poem is dedicated to Maria, a little working class girl of fifteen who died in a mental asylum. It is translated from Italian. Not all the words can be rendered exactly. The punctuation and capital letters are deliberately omitted.

*marana: This was a popular Roman word for a small drainage channel, part natural, part man-made. These channels have now disappeared together with the wonderful countryside around Rome, Italy, because of politico-urban speculation. Most of the popular traditions were connected to this countryside so they also have been lost with a serious loss of identity of working class Romans from the outskirts.

apoesidi is always written in small letters because small is more important than big.

But what does apoesidi mean?

It's true, this word does not exist in any dictionary in the world. So what? Is it a spelling mistake, a typing error, scribble? Or maybe it might be a term in esperanto or a word (the first and only) in a language still to be invented: the language of europe?

I composed this word by binding together the roots of two Italian words: apolide and poesia, and I used it for the title of my poem. When I realised that good and unknown people exist everywhere in the world. People that nobody ever considers and that are the best in the world. People that really know how to love, who protest for peace and against horrors. Simple people, people who make one dream: a future and without doubt better for humanity and for other creatures. When the people unite with good intent: God willing.