la subordonnée

Dibujo de Pablo Picasso

NON HO PERDUTO NULLA

Sono ancora qui, il sole gira
alle spalle come un falco e la terra
ripete la mia voce nella tua.
E ricomincia il tempo visibile
nell’occhio che riscopre la luce.
Non ho perduto nulla.
Perdere è andare di là
da un diagramma del cielo
lungo movimenti di sogni, un fiume
pieno di foglie.

SALVATORE QUASIMODO

Anita Maldere

B-Side & Rarities

This is the hour of the insomniac dawn.

Little Red Riding Hood slowly gnaws the wolf,
cutlery gone for bad and the beasts released in the ravaged forest.

The Sleeping Beauty swallows the sleeping pills

but no pill kicks in.

Snow White has had enough of the dwarves.

She mocks and curses and locks up all seven in a room,

padlocked in darkness.

Hansel and Gretel walk round in circles.

Hansel mistrusts Gretel. Gretel overtly lies to Hansel.

The breaded walls and the sugared house

were poisoned beforehand.

Cinderella’s crystal shoe is a secondhand;

it splinters and hurts and the foot bleeds.

This is the hour of the moon eclipse.

The hour of the thirst.

Peter Pan refuses to grow up. Let’s languish in Neverland.

The Little Mermaid bites her own tail and drowns at the sea.

And there are no princes. Nor witches with their herbal solace.

There is just me, me fully on my other side.

This is the hour of the deserted poles and the flaming castle.

The hour of the severed bridges and the fire-spitting dragons.

The Ugly Duckling is born and dies an ugly duckling.

There is no hidden or deferred beauty.

Only me, unchained.

Damn, if someone sent me those roses, I would thirst them.

If someone sent me that letter, I would shred it, unread.

If someone surrendered to me, I would run and betray.

If someone made me a promise, I would lock my ears.

It is the hour where everything

I would have chosen for my punishment

lands and seizes the town.

It’s not the world suddenly upside down.

It’s just my reverse, unleashed and hungry.

The usually overlooked, the unnoticed.

This is the hour of the implicit suicide, stubbornly performed.

The hour of the scent of abyss and the wings spread to horror.

The king is not naked. No mothers, no stepmothers.

Only my own instruments of torture, ready to unpack and proceed.

Nobody would be there, even if someone was.

This is my own flagellation task force.

Look at the burning deeds. I know nothing. I can’t stop.

Damn, if I could stop, I'd sharp this penknife.

To sink it even deeper, enthralled for what I fear,

instead of freeing it to daylight.

My best becomes my worst. I’m the insensible alchemist.

Passion equals to obsession and I can’t respond,

nor measure the price to pay.

This is my B-side. Listen to the blind hits, the whip.

Black bread crumbs fill in the sucking holes in the vinyl,

when inspiration ran out.

Welcome, my Mr. Hyde.

Even if I’m still the A-side girl, my Dr. Jeckyll.

(Only tell me where).

No split personalities, but pleasure in the sinister.

It is the hour of sickness, the sickness I must flee.

This awareness, perhaps,

the only valuable treasure of my B-side

(though someone dared to enjoy a certain beauty in this crime,

rejoice in the unbearable poetics of the unbearable).

I wish I could escape this torment,

be so healthily stupid to reinvent the end of fairy-tales.

Little Red Riding Hood watching cartoons at a cozy living-room,

sleeping pills in the junk box,

the dwarves on stage as leading characters,

Hansel and Gretel and a court of puppies.

No biting.

Shoes multiplying in the neighborhood.

Peter Pan choosing adulthood.

Mermaids vindicating their status,

and their ugliness, the ugly ducklings.
(Adulthood is being an orphan). 

I don’t want swans and I don’t want chains.

I want the king to be naked.

No more deliberate scars, I pray, on this trembling body.