A trainer. Just one.
On the sand, without laces,
in the field stormed by gunmen,
in the debris after the blast,
in the mud where they show you
the whole village has left,
On the deck where they passed,
among tins dirty blankets
and plastic bags.
One only.
You never stop seeing it.
on the desert strand,
unable to leave the roar.
With all that is lost
it's the only that lasts.
After the clamours we are hushed.
A multitude in a lapse.
We try to taste the rain to come.
The plain is still and stark,
billows of dust shift their rolling,
winding, nimble silhouettes
and stare into our hearts.
The spring storm is displayed at the horizon:
tiger's irises, glossy, velvet dark blue,
veined with lit lines of violet
and cracks of gold.
We sit on our haunches. We wait and hope.
Preys and predators.
The shimmering and scurrying in the twilight.
And the fairness of ignorance:
truth in suspended paws.
You have woken in spring, this morning
suddenly, that's for sure,
though not in a warmer air,
it's a simple matter of light,
still in bed you sense it out there,
fingers rummaging
in their trusting way,
getting with a rounder taste into space,
a door banging fully, with a flourish,
steps from the distance
straight on your skin;
light already entering
too many of your chinks,
stings at once cramming
your maze of nooks and crannies,
but despite everything
you were waiting for it,
despite the umpteenth
bloodbath in the floodlight
and the still unremoved
miles of rubble on the plain,
you were waiting, feeling both
ready and lost, young and old,
well into the always cruellest month
you can never feel so cruel at all.
Davide Trame is an Italian teacher of English, born and living in Venice.