Lucilla Trapazzo [Switzerland / Italy]

                                                           

                                                            A Gesture of Salt 

The three poems selected for the World Poets Magazine are a meditation in verses on wars, migrations, borders. These poems are like gestures offered upon a wound: to heal, to remember. Each poem is a fragment of a larger cartography of exile and resistance, a territory inhabited by women, children, migrants, and forgotten voices:
 
 
*In Absence is a silent cry of hope. One night on a refugee’s boat in the Mediterranean: one of many journeys of hope, tainted by the shadows of the future hardships, and the sorrow of the memories left behind. Over everything, there is the sea, big mother and never sated monster:
 
In Absence - a Boat named Hope
 
No moon tonight. The voracious belly
of the sea nurses on dreams
and flesh. A boat forgiven
is tainted by shadows
while furrowing the waters.
The promised destiny is distant.
A woman's face is suspended
in absence. Yesterday
the taste of home and native land.
Disdainful beaches
tomorrow.
 
 
*Beyond the Gaze, offers a symbolic portrait of a neglected humanity, the migrants, living too often at the borders of society, with their crosses of wars and horrors on the shoulders (in the poem, there is a hint to Jesus and Mother Mary). Over this forgotten humanity, there are our distracted eyes, barely noticing anymore the TV news recounting other existential tragedies:
 
Beyond the Gaze
 
Shattering is the misery of an injury
bound to libations of silence.
Mournful sum of time and space,
returns the migrant mother of the son
crucified to the disdain of crows
and torn apart between night and day
without ending nor beginning. Inhabiting
streets and houses abandoned to the memories,
in the magazines appear only photograms
or distracted words of news bulletins
in the evening on TV - just hollow noises
and frills of conscience in dissonance.
Sweet denial follows compassion.
 
Ego absolvo te a peccatis mundi. *
 
*(Latin – Catholic formula to absolve sinners)
 
 
*Transhumance, from the first steps of mankind, people migrated, scattering around the world, mixing and differentiating themselves in different cultures and customs. This poem is a sort of laic prayer and a quiet meditation on migrations, crowds and loneliness, nature and human landscape:
 
Transhumance
 
At the crossing of rivers intertwining
scarves, people migrate and birds
camels, elephants and jute sacks.
Under harsh shadows of torn skies
women carry in baskets
the cries of the fathers and knives
in the eyes of the children. Replicating
traces of love in a different horizon
on the route of far away delusions.
History is a meandering vein, digging 
craters on the face. An offering
of lotus flowers to extinguish the mark
of angular horror, and we harvest dreams
poured on sand. A wrinkle in the wind
leaves no trace.
 
(English translation by author)
 
 
 
Author’s Bionote:
 
*Lucilla Trapazzo (Switzerland/Italy): multi-awarded poet (including: Poet Laureate Kurora e Poezisë, Korca, Albania), translator, artist, performer; regular guest of international poetry festivals (as: Struga Poetry Evenings, N.Macedonia; Princeton, USA; Babylon Festival oft he Arts, Iraq). To her credit she has nine books of poetry, a series of translations of international poets, numerous literary collaborations. Firm supporter of human rights and Earth, her feminine perspective is reflected in many of her works.