The Eagle (L'Aquila, where I lived during the winter of 1999/2000) Poem by Antoine Cassar

And in the middle of a night
all things suddenly trembled:
the city, the darkness, the blood.

Like a toy
in the fist of a furious orphan
the mountain shook with a groan
and the dollhouses crumbled
under a balsam of dust.

The skin of the world gave way,
the knee of Italy folded,
the map changed
colours and shapes,
the land became a restless sea.

Here the room packed with books
of Via D'Annunzio,
here the cotton-white night
of a long kiss
in Via dei Torreggiani,
here the flowering market
row upon row
of Piazza Duomo,
here the sickly commerce
in the jolted intestine
of the Corso -
memories of memories
crumbled.

In the time of a shattered tick
what we men built like lace
fiercely lightens upon us,
eclipses us, sweeps us,
and again teaches us
that we are nothing more than a flash of lightning,
a speck of stardust,
a tiny fleck of earth.


Under the cracked clock
an eagle screeches -
perhaps for she has just realised
that she was born without wings,
perhaps for she has understood
that in the wide netting of the stars
the destiny of life resides not,
but rather
swims, waits,
rumbles
kneaded in the muds
of the creaking cauldron
underground.