[You taught youths ] Poem by Antonio Santori

You taught youths
craziness. Maybe that's why
you strove to make believe.
You dreamed of aphasic verse
a little library
to hold tight, a dream
of metal, full of frames.
You had understood you were
unheard, you were living
like the sounds of roots
or the sense of the horse's
run, toward the endless
world. You had no friends
but the thunder and the rooms
where you sometimes created yourself,
or the furious yellow
in Eurydice's eyes
and the bag where you stowed
revolts and dances.
You weren't looking for happyness.
Sometimes you dreamed of deep
Into the skin, deep into it
tenderly, coldly.
Like the rain
going deep into the sea.
Because like the sea
you felt you were September,
you felt you protected odour
of the rebellious animal,
slipping away in the luminous water.
You weren't asking for love. You dreamed
of chasing it in the suspicious
air of the land of the Name,
among silent things
where once you slept
like a colour. […]

Translated by Tania Calcinaro