LUCILLA TRAPAZZO

 

 

To A Body Without A Name

 

(Dedicated to all the migrant women dead during the difficult journey between Africa and Europe)

 

You've crossed millions of years,

to be here now, migrant woman

mournful sum of time and space crucified

to the disdain of crows

            without beginning nor ending.

 

I know, you too have smiled at life

I saw it engraved forever

on the photo you carried

stitched in red on your chest

 

you wore your pearl-like smile

while waiting for life

and all was river, moon, earth,

every day a new eternal cycle

 

and in essence you already were

this hollow shell.

 

In the land ravished in the wombs

of the mothers

planes don't stop

nothing remains

even dreams

depart together with the grenades

 

all the words

dwell in the mouth of silence

 

Behind The Sand Dune

(to the children of Gaza)

 

Things we leave behind:

a prosthetic arm with booklet

of instructions

clothes, shoes, some school notebooks

someone still keeps a report card

tucked in their pocket

as a guiding star

the rest is a pile of multiple parts

irrelevant items close to zero

things we leave behind

 

Strange iron sails rumble of engines

shadows of fingers running on the face

we have no river, we have no seas

only we have sand – golden

on monochrome canvas

we can collect a thumb a foot

before falling into a recess or we may gaze back

to the backdrop of the pyrotechnic scene

admire the force of fire

 

how much time do we have left?

 

I'm thirsty, I’m gasping, I'll settle for some soda

pouring from a fountain

just as on TV

 

Behind a sand dune a soldier and a child

(in hypothesis of elliptical time) stand

still

suspended

still there is a glimmer

 

of dazzling hope

 

LUCILLA TRAPAZZO

 

LUCILLA TRAPAZZO: M.A. (Switzerland/Italy). Swiss poet, translator, artist and performer. She is curator of Tanit, poetry series, for Bertoni Ed.; Co-director of the international poetry festival “Fortezza Alta in Poesia”, Avigliano Umbro. To her credit she has nine books of poetry, a series of translations of international poets, numerous literary collaborations with associations, magazines, journals, and poetry anthologies (as poet, editor and translator), a CD with compositions by Marco di Stefano. Regularly invited to perform in international poetry and art festivals, her poems are translated into 18 languages and received major international recognitions. A firm believer in human and planetary rights, her social and feminine perspective is reflected in many of her writings.