Umbrian Dawn

After 14 days of staying at Civitella Ranieri castello – where I am hard at work on what I hope would turn out to be a first draft of a novel – I was finally able to write a poem (see below, down below)...

Meanwhile, here is how I see the weather in Civitella…

Here, where breasts of mountain roll away to the left farther than the eyes can see, the land, on one part, is a bed of arid brown chunks and, on the other, a stream of fertile green, mists the colour of sperm cloud and dissolve in the same breath, where not too far from one’s feet, by a cluster of lavenders, small and purple, with scent as soporific as a sip of chamomile, a bumble-bee hums un-orchestrated tunes, breaking the silence of distance now and then, the sun shifting its face, shadowy at best – here, the weather changes forms the way a playboy changes his boxers ( why boxers, that was the best imagery I could think up at the time).

Oh, here is the poem which, I hope, approximates the feeling I had on Monday morning, October 15th 2012

Umbrian Dawn

It rains – quick slivers –

the sun dissolves
silence breaks like china
the sky turns
a monochrome, all grey

it rains –

a flutter! – a rustle! – a shiver! –

the windowpane echoes
across the grass
the porch

my breath whorls
against the glass –
fragments of distance
break at dawn

it rains
then silence –

the sky bursts anew
in the wake
between memory and sleep.