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Poems, by Davide Trame.

Davide Trame is an Italian teacher of English, born and living in Venice-Italy, writing poems exclusively in English since 1993. His poems have been published in around two hundred literary magazines since 1999, in U.K, U.S. and elsewhere. Recently in Poetry New Zealand , New Contrast (South Africa). Nimrod (U.S.), Prague Literary Review. This is his first appearance in Offcourse. You may contact him in care of [email protected].

Note.

Just the beginning of February,
still full winter, but at the crack of dawn
there's this bird now singing alone
outside the window, so very close,
the whole shutter filled with its twitter;
shrill at first, pointed, a nib
in a fast zigzagging, a sharp throbbing
scratching the air.
Then the twitter becomes a chatter,
loud, large, an outburst, you sense
the tone of an unrestrained confession,
a catharsis of the unknown.
And getting up you are surrounded
by a glad, cleansed air, unbounded,
nothing to do with what is on your narrow
daily agenda
but just a vast breath in which
for a moment you wallow.
You see the haze of innumerable yards
and the plain beyond, and this drop from down there
teasing bright by your wall.

—It's by chance— you should say,
but you want to believe it's on purpose
and so simple as completely unexplained.

HOURS

They cut neatly in, constant as they must be,
bell rings and beeps or just mute clock hands,
borders like blinks in the thin air
or hedges dividing fields
running now by the train window,
you cross and re-cross into the next
patch passing, eager anxious distracted
or lulled most of the time, by their regularity,
their presenting instant crossings
that confirm your heartbeat
and the tolling bell,
your most cherished memory and desire
of an evening, at the Angelus in Kerry,
the air still,
the whole mansion breathing,
the grass glistening after the rain,
your gaze at rest in the crowd of low clouds
and your breath like a hound's, now at home,
after treading its way through the wood,
the long steps, stretched seconds
in shuffles of leaves.

ARRIVAL

Here you are, in the wind
and the strand's roar,
facing the bursting bounty
of the sea foam.
Crest after crest, the relentless
display of wholeness.
And out there the widespread
expectancy, the bare waving
that's the bottom of your heart,
your foundations waiting
with open arms.
You lie down in a stare
that both tears you apart
and offers unconditioned rest,
warmly, in its boundlessness,
at the end of the journey.

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