CATERINA DAVINIO

CATERINA DAVINIO

I Saw It

It crackled

in the perpetual motion

of the stars,

in rock

and its magmas,

stone by stone

Frightened,

I stumbled on my way,

in the panic heat

of the afternoon,

like a saint

blinded by a vision,

rock by

rock,

It told me,

it shone,

sinister,

in the lazy eyes

of a cat,

in the aching bodies,

in the doubtful

foreseeing

of transparent

glass.

In the dismayed

minute,

the end everywhere,

patient

and awaited,

the inexperienced 

reason

was scared,

it rolled away

like a glass bead

on the path of earth

built by a child

in the festive afternoon

of a summer day,

like the paper boats

of Rimbaud.

Then

I decided to leave.

Kashi (Light)

In the heart of one hand

a gift

for the river

the almighty

gray of the dawn

slid along the banks

with the slight veils of an awakening.

Africa

Only our voices

and gray strips of palm

like shining backs

of coleoptera,

atrocious

and suffering

under the infinite sun

that is killing around;

the black wings

of the hut

closed over us,

they protected us like elytra

of a giant insect,

we trembled with

resignation

and drank water,

we laid down our weapons

in the gaunt shadow

in front of the horizon

in every direction.

I experienced that we were the Earth

our

planet

joyful

with forms

and we would

forever be

in the wrinkled skin

of that immense animal,

Ocean,

that thundered, there

with its winds

and fresh secret snakes

of current,

they lightly touched

our body

with flakes of gold in the water

now warm

now in motion

now placated

now violent whip

of shining foams

on our humble feet.

CATERINA DAVINIO

CATERINA DAVINIO:  Pseudonym of Maria Caterina Invidia, Foggia, Italy, 1957) is a novelist, poet and multimedia artist. She writes in Italian and English. After graduating in Italian Literature at Sapienza University of Rome, she has worked in the field of writing and new media as an artist and a theorist, in contact with the international avant-garde. Her work has been featured in Europe, Asia, the Americas, and Australia, in hundreds of festivals and exhibitions, such as the Biennials of Sydney, Athens, Merida, and the Venice Biennale, where she collaborated also as a curator. She is author of award-winning books of poetry, among them: Serial Phenomenologies (2010, It. - En.), The Book of Opium (2012, It.), Waiting for the End of the World (2012, It. - En.), Despicable Deeds (2015, It.), Aliens on Safari (It. - En., poetry and photography, 2016), Driftings and Other Daemons (It. - En., poetry and photography, 2018). Her poetry has been translated in several languages and presented in international literary festival, among them: Oslopoesi (Norway), Poetry Nights (Romania), Indoor Festival by Kafla (India), Golden Word (Uzbekistan), in The International Poetry Festival of Medellin and others. She has participated in the translation project 100 Great Indian Poems, by Abhay K. Kumar and has edited some anthologies of international poetry. Among the other publications by Davinio are four novels in Italian (Còlor Còlor, The Sofa on the Rails, SensesMirabilia, The Nothing Has Blue Eyes), and the essays: Techno-Poetry and Virtual Realities (It. - En.), and Virtual Mercury House – Planetary and Interplanetary Events (It. - En., documents and texts about net-poetry). In 2016 she has published  Rumors & Motors – Concepts of Poetry (It. - En. - Pt.) a collection of her digital poems from 1990 to 2016). Literary Criticism. Giorgio Barberi Squarotti, a major Italian literary critic, writes about her: «Sharp poetry, essential, cutting, between irony and tragedy, with lightning flashes of desperation and piety, of memory and anguish. It has a painful and lost grandeur». Whereas the poet and critic Dante Maffìa writes: «She is able to oscillate between classical allusions to the holy books and the work of great poets like Hölderlin, Baudelaire, Borges, Artaud and Celan, and then she comes to terms with the Beat Generation, with Ferlinghetti, Corso, with the philosophy of the Existentialists. With immediate acceptances, repulses, with vast ignitions and immense fires, with echoes of jazz and pop music».