Swans Commentary: Ausländer, by Guido Monte & Vittorio Cozzo

Swans Commentary » December 29, 2008 - January 1, 2009

Ausländer

by Guido Monte & Vittorio Cozzo

Multilingual Poetry

Translated by Annie Huth

Rakuen wa, subeteno hito no naka ni ari.
(Paradise is inside everyone.)
F. Dostoevskij
(translated into Japanese by Kazue Daikoku)

First Exercises
© 2008 Silvia Berizia

(Swans - December 29, 2008 - January 1, 2009)

it was just the clandestine voyage
of another unknown ausländer
(he was one of many),
and spoke words:

"you could see those eyes reflected
but I didn't feel like writing at night
it seemed the trees were a thousand years old
and even below the glass, men intersected
between staircases and slides

because at night my usual apparent calm
(full of anger inside, and fear)
was instead light and peace, and in my mind
the spirit seemed tangible to me, like a woman
of sweetest infinite tenderness, who embraced me
and grazed her mouth against my cheeks

so I saw her, almost in earnest
go up the stairs and whisper to me
'I love you'"

and in the end for him as well, the moment
of reckoning will arrive, to return to the substance
of created things... his soul has already grazed
the evidence of invisible things

era solo il viaggio clandestino
di un altro ausländer sconosciuto,
così, uno dei tanti,
e disse parole:

"si vedevano riflessi quegli occhi,
ma non mi andava di scrivere nella notte,
gli alberi pareva avessero mill'anni
e anche giù dal vetro uomini s'intersecavano
tra scalinate e scivoli

"perché nella notte la mia solita calma apparente
(piena di rabbia dentro, e paura)
fu invece luce e pace, e nella mente
l'anima pareva a me palpabile, come una donna
di dolcissima infinita tenerezza, che mi abbracciava
e sfiorava la sua bocca sulle mie guance

"così la vedevo quasi per davvero
salire le scale e sussurrarmi
'ti voglio bene'"

e alla fine anche per lui arrivó il momento
della resa dei conti, di tornare alla sostanza
delle cose create... la sua anima sfiorava ormai
l'evidenza delle cose invisibili

Vittorio E. Cozzo was born in Palermo. He is a free thinker who against all odds publishes experimental works with Guido Monte (e.g., "Nothing recalled and the mysterious life of God." http://www.swans.com/library/art12/gmonte05.html). He continues to live and operate in some remote part of Palermo.

Annie Huth was born in Washington, D.C., and is a student of foreign languages and social sciences at Elon University, North Carolina. Time and again she helps Guido Monte (her former teacher of Italian literature) to translate his experimental works into English.

Pic: First Exercises (2008), by Silvia Berizia.

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Swans -- ISSN: 1554-4915
URL for this work: http://www.swans.com/library/art15/gmonte58.html
Published December 29, 2008