Valerio Magrelli Poems

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.
...

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
...

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
...