My Years and Yours

I’m determined to stay out
from the fray
if a bridge trembles
and a train whistles
in the hills there is my mother
that awaits me
looking out of a quarter window
looking down
and she calls me, and she hopes
may it arrive soon
after that painful journey
that she kept us away
for days and months.

A spinning record voice
sings in falsetto:
The white flag flies on the bridge.
A little girl breathlessly repeats:
Under the mistral he screams
and the sea whitens.
She holds her breath, stops.
Finally, she raises her head:
Flocks of black birds
among the reddish clouds.
She looks at the book,
she repeats, reading: in vespers migrar.

An aunt knocks on the door,
an aunt among many,
she barely looks out:
“What are you doing? Isn’t your mother here?”
The little girl shrugs
she doesn’t know what to answer.
The aunt leaves after a doubt
repressed.
“They are all aunts in town”
The little girl thinks to herself.
“I don’t even know who he is.”

There is no one who can explain to me
the country,
what’s the mood.
I know those roofs
one by one, I know where
swallows nest,
where the long antennas
they move shaken by the wind
above
in the middle of that river of tiles
red
that flows
up to the mouth
where an iron cross
exposes the spear and sponge
soaked in vinegar.

The heart beats
past anxieties.

And a remote joy
on a whim
unexpected
it turns on
for the danger averted.

You’re back dad
finally
you returned to the marble house
on that arch of green earth
of wheat
moved by a bora
freezing
in winter and summer.
If it didn’t resonate
that sound of bells in the air
I would repeat from memory
that dedication
that goes out
in the throat
strangled by tears:
“I love you, Toni.”

I heard dad that you are alive,
you went back to look
the vineyard,
than your gaze
will remain lit
forever on the folds
of those hills
greens
of wheat and olive trees
that nobody
knows
like your look.

“I love you dad”
I tell you
now that the churches are silent.
I love you
Why
I knew
that you suffered
staying
for days and months
distant.

But I’m going back now
travel
after the loss that took my life.
I went down the street,
in the street among the olive trees,
I greeted my mother
that she is now at peace,
her voice is calmer
knowing I stay with you
side by side
on that arc of land
that she made you saints.

My throat is again
red:
“I love you, Toni”
the echo booms
which is recalled
and regret
of a life
that marked mine
and your years.

Antonio Gerardo D’Errico
All rights reserved to the author