VENETIA PHAIR

 

When Pluto was demoted to a dwarf planet

I was bummed

the list I’d learned at school

Mercury-Venus-Earth-Mars-Jupiter-Saturn-Uranus-Neptune-Pluto

no longer applied and Pluto had now become 

the trans-Neptunian celestial body 134340 

nothing but a big rock in the Kuiper Belt

the International Astronomical Union had made the call 

and that was that  

same thing happened to Ceres

a planet for fifty years

then one day plain old asteroid 1 Ceres

when Pluto was demoted

I can only imagine 

how bummed Venetia Phair must have been 

she who at twelve had suggested 

the name Pluto to her grandfather

after reading in the paper 

about the discovery of a new planet

Venetia died at almost ninety 

a few months after her planet 

became a dwarf 

maybe that was why she died

disappointment

people die for weird reasons 

like Chrysippus of Soli who died laughing 

at the sight of a donkey eating his figs

or Kurt Gödel who starved to death 

after refusing food others had cooked

or the umpire Dick Wertheim 

during a tennis match

he took such a thwack to the testicles  

he fell from his chair and split open his head 

or the cameraman Ivan Lester McGuire

out filming skydivers

as they leaped into the unknown 

he leapt too having forgotten 

he hadn’t put on a parachute 

 

Massimo Schuster (trans. Will Schutt)

VENETIA PHAIR

 

Quando Plutone è stato declassato a pianeta nano

ci sono rimasto male

la lista che avevo imparato a scuola

Mercurio-Venere-Terra-Marte-Giove-Saturno-Urano-Nettuno-Plutone

non era più valida e Plutone era ormai diventato

il corpo celeste transnettuniano 134340 Pluto

solo un grosso sasso nella fascia di Kuiper

lʼavevano deciso quelli dellʼUnione astronomica internazionale

e non cʼera più niente da fare 

era già successo a Cerere

pianeta per cinquant'anni

e poi semplice asteroide 1 Ceres

quando Plutone è stato declassato

posso solo immaginare

come ci sia rimasta male Venetia Phair

lei che a dodici anni aveva suggerito 

il nome Plutone al nonno

dopo aver letto sul giornale

della scoperta di un nuovo pianeta 

Venetia è morta a quasi novant'anni

pochi mesi dopo che il suo pianeta

era diventato nano

forse è morta per questo

per il dispiacere

la gente muore per motivi strani

come Crisippo di Soli che è morto dal ridere

vedendo un asino che gli mangiava i fichi

o Kurt Gödel che è morto di fame

perché rifiutava il cibo preparato da altri

o il giudice di sedia Dick Wertheim

che durante una partita di tennis

ha ricevuto una tale pallata nei testicoli 

che è caduto dalla sedia fracassandosi la testa

o il cameraman Ivan Lester McGuire 

che filmando dei paracadutisti

che si lanciavano nel vuoto

si è lanciato anche lui scordandosi

che il paracadute non se lʼera messo

 

Massimo Schuster 

 

 

Atlantic Oil

The drunk mechanic is happy to be in the ditch.

From the tavern, five minutes through the dark field

and you’re home. But first, there’s the cool grass

to enjoy, and the mechanic will sleep here till dawn.

A few feet away, the red and black sign that rises

from the field: if you’re too close, you can’t read it,

it’s that big. At this hour, it’s still wet dew.

Later, the streets will cover it with dust, as it covers

the bushes. The mechanic, beneath it, stretches in sleep.

 

Silence is total. Shortly, in the warmth of the sun,

one car after another will pass, waking the dust.

At the top of the hill they slow down for the curve,

then plunge down the slope. A few of the cars

stop at the garage, in the dust, to drink a few liters.

At this time of the morning, the mechanics, still dazed,

will be sitting on oil drums, waiting for work.

It’s a pleasure to spend the morning sitting in the shade,

where the stink of oil’s cut with the smell of green,

of tobacco, of wine, and where work comes to them,

right to the door. Sometimes it’s even amusing:

peasants’ wives come to scold them, blaming the garage

for the traffic—it frightens the animals and women—

and for making their husbands look sullen: quick trips

down the hill into Turin that lighten their wallets.

Between laughing and selling gas, one of them will pause:

these fields, it’s plain to see, are covered with road dust,

if you try to sit on the grass, it’ll drive you away.

On the hillside, there’s a vineyard he prefers to all others,

and in the end he’ll marry that vineyard and the sweet girl

who comes with it, and he’ll go out in the sun to work,

but now with a hoe, and his neck will turn brown,

and he’ll drink wine pressed on fall evenings from his own grapes.

 

Cars pass during the night, too, but more quietly,

so quiet the drunk in the ditch hasn’t woken. At night

they don’t raise much dust, and the beams of their headlights,

as they round the curve, reveal in full the sign in the field.

Near dawn, they glide cautiously along, you can’t hear a thing

except maybe the breeze, and from the top of the hill

they disappear into the plain, sinking in shadows.

 

Cesare Pavese,  Disaffections: Complete Poems 1930-1950

Untitled

O stay where you are! Here
in the uncertain hour of a late afternoon
looking outward and looking in
I see this beauty
all I see is beauty.
Something that convinces, asks to be seen,
though it does nothing, just stays where it is,
and merely by existing wins me over.

 

Patrizia Cavalli, My Poems Won’t Change the World 

Verrà la morte e avrà i tuoi occhi

When Death Comes, It Will Have Your Eyes

When death comes, it will have your eyes-
This death that is always with us,
From morning till evening, sleepless,
Deaf, like an old remorse
Or some senseless bad habit. Your eyes
Will be an empty word,
A stifled cry, a silence;
The way they appear to you each morning,
When you lean into yourself, alone,
In the mirror. Sweet hope,
That day we too shall know
That you are life and you are nothingness.

For each of us, death has a face.
When death comes, it will have your eyes.
It will be like quitting some bad habit,
Like seeing a dead face
Resurface out of the mirror,
Like listening to shut lips.
We’ll go down into the vortex in silence.

-Cesare Pavese (1950)

https://julianpeterscomics.com/2013/02/02/cesare-pavese-when-death-comes-itll-have-your-eyes-verra-la-morte-e-avra-i-tuoi-occhi/

Incontro ravvicinato

Corrado Calabrò

L’infinito

I always loved this solitary hill,
This hedge as well, which takes so large a share
Of the far-flung horizon from my view;
But seated here, in contemplation lost,
My thought discovers vaster space beyond,
Supernal silence and unfathomed peace;
Almost I am afraid; then, since I hear
The murmur of the wind among the leaves,
I match that infinite calm unto this sound
And with my mind embrace eternity,
The vivid, speaking present and dead past;
In such immensity my spirit drowns,
And sweet to me is shipwreck in this sea


Sempre caro mi fu quest'ermo colle,
E questa siepe, che da tanta parte
Dell'ultimo orizzonte il guardo esclude.
Ma sedendo e mirando, interminati
Spazi di là da quella, e sovrumani
Silenzi, e profondissima quiete
Io nel pensier mi fingo; ove per poco
Il cor non si spaura. E come il vento
Odo stormir tra queste piante, io quello
Infinito silenzio a questa voce
Vo comparando: e mi sovvien l'eterno,
E le morte stagioni, e la presente
E viva, e il suon di lei. Cosi tra questa
Immensita s'annega il pensier mio:
E il naufragar m'è dolce in questo mare.

Giacomo Leopardi , L’infinito, 1819

Passion for Solitude

I'm eating a little supper by the bright window.
The room's already dark, the sky's starting to turn.
Outside my door, the quiet roads lead,
after a short walk, to open fields.
I'm eating, watching the sky—who knows
how many women are eating now. My body is calm:
labor dulls all the senses, and dulls women too.

Outside, after supper, the stars will come out to touch
the wide plain of the earth. The stars are alive,
but not worth these cherries, which I'm eating alone.
I look at the sky, know that lights already are shining
among rust-red roofs, noises of people beneath them.
A gulp of my drink, and my body can taste the life
of plants and of rivers. It feels detached from things.
A small dose of silence suffices, and everything's still,
in its true place, just like my body is still.

All things become islands before my senses,
which accept them as a matter of course: a murmur of silence.
All things in this darkness—I can know all of them,
just as I know that blood flows in my veins.
The plain is a great flowing of water through plants,
a supper of all things. Each plant, and each stone,
lives motionlessly. I hear my food feeding my veins
with each living thing that this plain provides.

The night doesn't matter. The square patch of sky
whispers all the loud noises to me, and a small star
struggles in emptiness, far from all foods,
from all houses, alien. It isn't enough for itself,
it needs too many companions. Here in the dark, alone,
my body is calm, it feels it's in charge.

Cesare Pavese
Translated by Geoffrey Brock