by Ruggero Stefanini

Translation by N. J. Perella

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celebrazione colombiana

Cola e s’aggruma il sangue sulla stuoia.

Avido vi s’abbatte un ronzìo

che continuo si mesce

allo scroscio d’un cieco

gorgo interiore.

Che mai tant’aghi d’agave

cerchino ancora dentro le tue vene,

aride come canali insabbiati!

Si dirocca

sulla tua fronte madida

un’intera piramide di denti

e d’eretti sonagli.

Hanno strappato

le penne di quetzal

e un soffio soffocante di vulcano

l’alza e le sperde fino alla compatta

ossidiana del cielo.

La presa s’allentò

sui capi della rete che insaccava

magicamente il male ed il nemico:

ora sciamano sciolti e se n’ammorban

l’epoche e le pianure.

Illeggibili

cadono i fogli

dai calendari cosmici.

Senti esaurita

col battito del cuore

la tua testimonianza

d’impotente fatica,

né sai perché dovesti

salire tante scale a questa cella—

dove la carne

del sacrificio imputridisce sola

e, congiurato, non risponde il dio.

a columbian celebration

Blood drips, coagulating on the mat.

Avidly a raging buzz strikes there,

constantly mingling with the roar

of a blind inner vortex.

So many agave needles—

what more can they be seeking

within your veins, depleted

like silted-up canals?

On your beaded forehead

a whole pyramid of fangs

and upright rattles

crumbles.

The quetzal feathers

have been torn away,

swept up and driven

by a volcano’s stifling blast

toward the compact obsidian of the sky.

Your grip,

that magically enclosed

the evil and the enemy in the net,

has slackened.

Now, released, they swarm,

infecting the ages and the plains.

From cosmic calendars

illegible pages fall.

Already you sense

that your testimony

of ineffectual labor

wanes with your heartbeat;

and you know not why

you had to climb so many steps to this cell

where the sacrificial flesh rots alone

and to no avail is the god invoked.

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descent of the species

Mi saresti piaciuto di più,

fratello uomo,

se ti avessi incontrato

sui primi palchi

di tronchi vertiginosi

o in un arsiccio avvallamento

della savana,

quando non imprimevi

con l’unghia della canna

maglie acute di segni sulla creta

né già smistavi al tempio ed al palazzo

i lamentosi branchi

dell’esazione,

quando eri ancora

poco più d’una scimmia frugivora

dagli occhi curiosi e guardinghi,

innocente all’attacco ed alla fuga,

né costruivi origini gloriose

alle tue instabili associazioni

né mitiche ragioni all’umiliante

necessità di spostamento,

né pretendevi i secoli futuri—

tu così ricco e ignaro d’avvenire

fra gli ultimi puledri

di moribonde specie—

e ti era Dio un’occulta gestazione,

e non la reclamata somiglianza.

descent of the species

I would have loved you more,

my brother-man,

had I met you

on the lowest limbs

of dizzying trunks

or in a parched hollow

of the savannah,

when you had not yet imprinted

with the splinter of a reed

hard-wedged stitches into clay,

had not yet sorted between temple and palace

the plaintive flocks

of the tax collection,

when you were still

little more than a frugivorous ape

with curious and wary eyes,

as innocent on the attack as in flight,

and did not construe glorious origins

for your unstable associations

nor mythical reasons for the humbling

necessity of your displacements,

and still had laid no claim to future ages—

you so rich and unaware of time-to-be

amid the last colts

of dying species—

when God was still a hidden gestation to you,

and not the boasted likeness.