water, more water,
water that never stops,
is never tied.
liberated water, crazed,
contained by no land,
salty with the sweat poured
into it each day
…
to the longed-for landing, if it pulled us
like a rope and tied us together,
so long as we arrived on the
beach
hard cold but bed at least
rest, it would be this after the rift
of the sea crossed
this would be the sea’s surrender;
water that never stopped
recomposing and revealing whirlpools
in new-patterned waves and crests
and chasms more threatening than night,
it is water that cannot be tied
no land contains it.
The rope held wood and cardboard
to make a lifeboat
and tied us in a single body
with sour, panting breath
that ulcerating hard rope
enclosing without separating
waves from dry grains of salt
and the indigestible breath of water.
That gesture: we’d have like to break
the water, but we had to wait still
to be a body together
against the water
to escape the depths
water not untied on shore, not free
no bed instead
no peace, no air, no light
but every thing in sharp shards of glass
laid with care on an appendage of land
suffocated cement and wires and inks
- drops of blacker water,
we in a bad row went towards a house of wounds
where shards of body
are led by that same rope
still being pulled, harshly led:
thus we are imprints, but horribly
transformed
the same already left on shore
(1) is an abbreviation for Centro di Permanenza temporanea (Centre for temporary sojourn) is the name of the holding camps where illegal immigrants, in this case boat people, are held until the decision is made whether or not to allow them to remain in Italy. The existence of these camps and of conditions in them have come in for heavy criticism. (translator’s note)
Marco Busetta was born in 1979 in Palermo, but he is proud of his Pantelleria Island heritage. He has studied piano and engineering and worked in Montpellier until 2005. Then he lived in Liege, Belgium, for a few months. Since his return to Italy, he has dedicated himself to tourism in Sicily. where he has taken part in a study on non-invasive transportation, starting from the restoration of a disused railway line, a project that is currently in the executive phase. He collaborates with a newspaper, with a new-born theatre company, and writes. In 2006 he rediscovered his love for music and enrolled in the musicology course at the University of Bologna.