Modern Love Li (One Moment Of Unbearable Gentleness) Poem by Liberatore Suffoletta

The whole sky rang a short piercing note
from east to west, echoes filled space
without encountering a single obstacle
along a perfect curve and suddenly died
Silently facing the limitless,
an ocher and gray realm of stones
slowly being crushed to sand
where no life is visible.
All around a flock of motionful seagulls
tiny in the distance
black signs of a strange handwriting
yet to be deciphered above the green ocean
Silence as vast as the stretching water
A static clock tic toc’s fill in the pauses
A solitary seagull cah cah cah’s
The wind opens a void in the note

Over yonder, farther south
That point where sky and earth meet
in a pure line
over yonder, suddenly there was awaiting
something
though it had always been lacking
never aware until now
advanced morning light relaxed
from crystalline purple to periwinkle blue
Simultaneously, by pure chance
a knot
tightened by years, habit, boredom
slowly loosened.
Existence had barely been known
until this day
homeless, cut off from the world,
wandering over vast territory
which is just a paltry part of a even greater expanse
Where the first river waters the forest
since the beginning of time
where the dry earth, scraped to the bone
of limitless land, has been ceaselessly drudged
possessing nothing, serving no one, poverty-stricken,
yet a free lord of a strange kingdom
A kingdom eternally promised, yet never to be
other than in this moment
of motionless sky and waves of periwinkle light
Suddenly fallen silent
The world’s course just stopped
and from this moment on
No one shall ever age any more
Or die
Everywhere, henceforth, life is suspended
Except in this heart
Where at the same moment
someone was weeping from affliction
and wonder

The light began to move
The sun, clear, full of warmth
bent under a tremendous and sudden fatigue
became slightly pink, moving towards the west
dragging the universe whose weight seemed unbearable
while a gray wave took shape in the south east
ready to roll slowly over the vast green ocean
An invisible sea gull cah cah cah’d in exaltation
As all the creatures who walk the earth
drag themselves towards sleep, toward death?
a sort of fear growing within some
borne on the sound of that note
that slowly crushes stones into sand
Counting days and nights behind eyelids
where motionless monarch butterflies graze
in a fecund salt marsh spotted with lilac loose strife
where immense solitudes are whirling
where silence is absolute
where night is soundless
Adrift on the surface of sleep
without sinking in
clinging to that fear
with unconscious eagerness
as a safe haven
A lifetime of breaths
with that set expression
assumed by those mad,
hiding under an appearance of wisdom
until the lunacy seizes them to hurling
desperately towards a woman’s body,
To bury without desire
everything terrifying
that solitude and night reveal.
Some, cut off from others by a vocation
or misfortune, sleep alone until the end
go to bed every night in the same bed,
as death
Some, weak,
like disarmed children, always frightened
by suffering, whimper, cuddle a little closer
call each other little love names
until a nameless anguish seizes them
and they draw back from each other
Overcoming nothing, not happy, going to die
in truth, without having been liberated.
Painful hearts of stone
Stifled under the weight, suddenly discovered,
dragged around for a lifetime
struggling under that
to be liberated.
Waiting to be, even if all the others,
never were.
Wanting to be fully awake
Listening to that note
that now seems very close
as from the edges of night
exhausted and indefatigable voices
of memory and pride call from an oasis
where slight winds of zephyrs
and delicate light waters flow
in a palm grove from the south
where ocean and light mingle now
where garland of stars
hang down from the black sky
over the green icicle speckled water
where coolness, no longer struggling with the sun,
invades the unchanging earth
where life stops
where no one shall age or die any more
where the waters of the wind dry up
where no one is sure of having heard
anything,
except a note
that could, after all, be silence.
The certainty of never to know its meaning
Unless one responds to it, at once.
At once, yes, that much is certain,
with heart beating madly
with body tense
reassured by the silence, by the note
cool air burning warm lungs
half blind in darkness
trembling all over
gulping the night’s air down
A spark of warmth begins to glow
amidst shivers of fear
Eyes open at last, on the empty expanse
Not a breath
Not a sound
The muffled crackling of stones
being reduced to sand
disturbing the solitude and the silence.
After a moment
sky above moving in a slow gyration
In the vast reaches of the humid cool night
thousands of stars began to appear
loosening at once their sparkling icicles
which began to slip gradually, towards the horizon
into the green ocean creating waves
that vibrate into a mute note
little by little identifying everything,
everyone, from those drifting flares
of stars falling one by one
creating endless gray waves
being snuffed out,
breaking on the pebbles of the beach
creating grains of sand

After so many years, mad,
aimlessly fleeing from fears
coming to a stop at last,
merely waiting for a fluttering heart
to calm down
establish silence within
as the last stars of the constellations
dropp their clusters a little lower
on the horizon’s ocean
and become still.
One moment the water of night
fills the moment with unbearable gentleness
overflowing in wave after wave
rising up in a plum mouth full of moans.
The next moment, the whole dark sky
stretches out above, falls on its back
On the cold earth,
weeping copiously without restraint.
It’s all nothing,
It’s nothing at all.