Valerio Magrelli
Valerio Magrelli Poems
TRAIN-COMET
The claimant's request is based on the premise that, following
passage of a freight train, a fire spread from the nearby tracks to
his own adjoining property, destroying his crops. He further claims
...
A steel comb uncurls
the notes, swirls
a sweet music of cotton
candy. Like a charmer
...
As you rest beside me, I lean over
and by your face I catch hold of sleep
the way one wick
catches hold of another wick's flame.
...
The pen slides
down the groin of the page,
while writing collects itself in silence.
This page has the geometry
...
Let us not adopt those spectacles that sadly enclose
a few people in a dark center,
keeping them fearful and immobile in silence and inertia.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
...
Satellites of a solar system coming undone,
of a nucleus in decay, particles being freed,
pearls unthreaded from their orbitals, pellets
clinking, hailing, twinkling
...
That matter can provoke contagion
if touched in its inmost fibers
ripped like a calf from its mother
like a pig from its own heart
...
Evenings, when the light dims
and I lie hidden in bed,
I gather outlines of ideas
...
I've often imagined gazes
surviving the act of seeing
as if they were poles,
measured distances, lances
...
Presence and absence.
Geological mutation.
Me yielding under his weight.
Subsidence
and my slow sinking.
...
Valerio Magrelli Biography
Valerio Magrelli (Rome, 1957) is the author of four poetry collections, for which he has won the Mondello Prize, the Viareggio Prize for poetry, and the Montale Prize. In November 2003 the Accademia dei Lincei awarded him the Premio Antonio Feltrinelli. A professor of French literature at the University of Cassino, he is also a frequent contributor to the cultural pages of several Italian dailies. His poems have been translated into English, French, Spanish and a number of other languages.)
The Best Poem Of Valerio Magrelli
Train-comet
TRAIN-COMET
The claimant's request is based on the premise that, following
passage of a freight train, a fire spread from the nearby tracks to
his own adjoining property, destroying his crops. He further claims
that the fire was started by a fail-ure to disengage the brakes, when
the train was already in motion, from the wheels of a single boxcar,
unleashing a series of flying sparks. The mechanic's report, here
attached, suggests that ducts obstructed by oil impurities jammed the
brakes, resulting in red hot shoes and treads, and a burned out chassis.
(from sentence no. 6826/87, ROME CIVIL COURTS)
Train-comet,
bewitched matchbox, iron
grinding against the rails,
brake pulled, friction,
screeches, train-
strain, mangling the night.
I was approaching with blocked wheels
contracted vertebrae
hyphenated-words,
and from my strain stemmed heat
and color, and an odor
of burnt flesh:
sparks, tongues of fire
raining in the night.
Oh, braking boxcars, hyphenated-words,
fricative that I am, picture of friction.
Valerio Magrelli Comments
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