POESIE
di Stephen Pain

ODE TO QUENTIN TARANTINO

One day he walks along
and he thinks he knows the broad,
she's got to be 
a dame with a name,
and he can't quite
figure it out,
why he's walking back
to take another look
as the boys say "Check
out the action"
and the camera pans the street
as he walks up and down
to test her reaction
and she doesn't even
blink an eyelid
but holds her cigarette between
her two fingers in film noir
style,
her done up in Latino
she wears black stockings
a shortish black skirt, and
a black orcid
on a white blouse,
and shit, she's getting up
and he shuffles back,
in a mo, she'll be next
to him,
but she walks straight
past him to a nearby 
department store,
and of course,
being a dumb ass, he follows
her,
call it fatal attractraction,
and she moves like a whisper
between the counters
he sees her test the faberge
addiction
and pocket with her left hand
a number of expensive perfumes,
she's got class and sass
and they emerge
together, and she hasn't
cottoned onto him
and he still doesn't know whether
she's a dame with a name,
so no time like the present, and
he calls her "Rose"
it could have been Helen, May,
Ruth, Felicity, it would have been
all the same, she turns round, and
he saw her laugh a little, then there
was for a hair-split moment,
the look of vulnerability, you know
the Ingrid Bergman look,
and her hand reaches in a bag,
a very familiar scene
in which the doll, peach or innocent
pulls out a pearl-handled gun
and coldly shoots the hero
and fuck and fuck he screams
as fake blood spews out
like San Sebastian and his arrows
or a la John Wayne,
he falls, collapses,
in clock time--no Verdi opera
this,
and he sees whatever her name is,
run out in her black stilettoes.


John Keats 1795-1995

Odious bicentenary
for poor, poor, John Keats
for nearly every biography
will scamper between the bed sheets,
and dons and snobs will gather on Oxbridge
grass, and they will drink wine from picnic
hampers, and leisurely rifle through your past,
they will recite from dusty copies of your poetry
brought down especially from the attic,
while others look on, paying for the privilege
of listening to poor, poor, John Keats
on his bicentenary.



M.

We will begin 
with a surprise
with
      MA
            RE
                  VA
                  the discovery
                  of hidden selves
                  those equitable syllables
                  which sound and resound
                  very much in my mind
                  like your name
                  an interim measure
                  between remembering
                  and forgetting.
                  
I will not look
into your eyes
for I already know
the future
it is outside the law
of poetry
it is the joke
I tell myself
every day. 


M.
(Traduzione di Vittorio Curtoni)


Inizieremo
con una sorpresa
con
     MA
          RE
               VA
               la scoperta
               d'identita' nascoste
               queste eque sillabe
               che suonano e risuonano
               a lungo nella mia mente
               come il tuo nome
               una misura a interim
               prima di ricordare
               e dimenticare.
               
Non guardero'
nei tuoi occhi
perche' gia' conosco
il futuro
e' al di fuori delle leggi
della poesia
e' la battuta
che ripeto a me stesso
tutti i giorni.


Nota del traduttore: Il dato  piu' notevole di questa poesia
e' che l'autore, Stephen Pain, il quale al  momento  si  sta
laureando   in   legge  in  Inghilterra,  e'  partito  dalla
cosiddetta "Mareva injunction" (una  misura legale che serve
a congelare i beni di un  imputato,  impedendo  che  vengano
trasferiti  su  un  altro conto corrente prima del processo)
per trarne  cio'  che  avete  letto.   Mareva, dice Stephen,
somiglia al nome di una ragazza, e cosi' si e' verificato il
passaggio dalla fredda  burocrazia  della  legge  al  calore
delle leggi della poesia...