Grazie di cuore all’amico poeta e critico letterario Hassanal Abdullah per avere scelto alcune mie poesie da inserire nella rivista letteraria da lui curata, Shabdaguchha pubblicata a New York.
ABSOLUTE INFINITY
(Georg Cantor)
The diagonal was a ladder leading up to heaven
which the mind was climbing, each number was a step towards infinity.
Yet beyond the continuum hypothesis
the spirit was yearning for the Absolute.
Away from the centre, beyond mediocrity,
in the mind’s white prison,
fate is decided
by those who fail to understand.
EUREKA
(Archimedes)
Against all prejudice you loved reality the enthralling irregularity of bodies.
Any curve can be straight,
any volume can be stored
in the perfection of a cube.
You saw through the laws of the lever,
in the immensely large and the immensely small
, you were in search of infinity.
Evil is ignorance of the sword
which breaks life
among circles written on the sand.
FIBONACCI’S NUMBERS
(Leonardo Pisano, known as Fibonacci)
That bridge between East and West built on numbers.
You grasped the greatness of Arabian merchants
and your stunning genius
was universally admired
at Frederick II’s court.
The abstract perfection of those signs,
the magic series hidden
in the alchemic beauty of the shell
and the falcon’s mystery in his flight,
later on described by Pacioli,
divine proportion.
MIGRANT
From the skylight I can see a square of rain
a swollen red leg
and I’m somewhat of a Rimbaud.
In Tijuana hopeless people and rats get through
the barbed wire,
and I stop my nose
as he says “Hey, guapa!
and I run away (I don’t know where)
to show dignity.
I have a canyon in my brain
and craters in my lungs. I can make it.
Translated from the Italian by Annarita Tavani