"Andrea Zanzotto"

Mondo, sii, e buono;

esisti buonamente,

fa’ che, cerca di, tendi a, dimmi tutto,

ed ecco che io ribaltavo eludevo

e ogni inclusione era fattiva

non meno che ogni esclusione;

su bravo, esisti,

non accartocciarti in te stesso in me stesso

Io pensavo che il mondo così concepito

con questo super-cadere super-morire

il mondo così fatturato

fosse soltanto un io male sbozzolato

fossi io indigesto male fantasticante

male fantasticato mal pagato

e non tu, bello, non tu “santo” e “santificato”

un po’ più in là, da lato, da lato

Fa’ di (ex-de-ob etc.)-sistere

e oltre tutte le preposizioni note e ignote,

abbi qualche chance,

fa’ buonamente un po’;

il congegno abbia gioco.

Su, bello, su.

Su, münchhausen.

Da La Beltà, 1968

"The Angry Young Men"

"With all the knowledge of love"

"We were called to the forest and we went down a wind blew warm in our hut we were searching for the secrets of the universe and we rounded up demons and forced them to tell us what it all meant we tied them to trees and broke them down one by one and on a scrap of paper they wrote these words and as we read them the sun broke through the trees dread the passage of jesus for he will not return then we headed back to our world and left the forest behind our hearts singing with all the knowledge of love but somewhere somehow we lost the message along the way and when we got home we bought ourselves a house and we bought a car we did not use and we bought a cage and two birds and at night we would listen to the canaries song for we both ran out of words now the stars they are all angled wrong and the sun and the moon they refuse to burn but I remember a message in a demon hand dread the passage of jesus for he does not return he does not return he does not return"

"The road to God knows where"

"Fiori e croci"

Suzanne takes you down to her place near the river
You can hear the boats go by
You can spend the night beside her
And you know that she's half crazy
But that's why you want to be there
And she feeds you tea and oranges
That come all the way from China
And just when you mean to tell her
That you have no love to give her
Then she gets you on her wavelength
And she lets the river answer
That you've always been her lover
And you want to travel with her
And you want to travel blind
And you know that she will trust you
For you've touched her perfect body with your mind.

And Jesus was a sailor
When he walked upon the water
And he spent a long time watching
From his lonely wooden tower
And when he knew for certain
Only drowning men could see him
He said "All men will be sailors then
Until the sea shall free them"
But he himself was broken
Long before the sky would open
Forsaken, almost human
He sank beneath your wisdom like a stone
And you want to travel with him
And you want to travel blind
And you think maybe you'll trust him
For he's touched your perfect body with his mind.

Now Suzanne takes your hand
And she leads you to the river
She is wearing rags and feathers
From Salvation Army counters
And the sun pours down like honey
On our lady of the harbour
And she shows you where to look
Among the garbage and the flowers
There are heroes in the seaweed
There are children in the morning
They are leaning out for love
And they will lean that way forever
While Suzanne holds the mirror
And you want to travel with her
And you want to travel blind
And you know that you can trust her
For she's touched your perfect body with her mind.

"Ragtime"

"Erewhon"

"We had a good time in Doubleback alley. Doubleback Alley takes me back"

"Was there a time"

Was there a time when dancers with their fiddles
In children's circuses could stay their troubles?
There was a time they could cry over books,
But time has set its maggot on their track.
Under the arc of the sky they are unsafe.
What's never known is safest in this life.
Under the skysigns they who have no arms
Have cleanest hands, and, as the heartless ghost
Alone's unhurt, so the blind man sees best.

(Dylan Thomas)