"
From the dream of the Venetian painter"
I know, now, that I can't recall her name:
in vain, day after day, as when I was a child,
I have searched my memory for it, forgetting
I learned the art of forgetting years ago.
It was barely a whisper, between tongue and veil,
she never said it again, the whisper
remained in me, her breath.
That was the secret of her name, and it was the name.
Now I have recovered and learned again
the art of forgetting, now I remember well
(here, mirroring the recollection of her in the Grand Canal)
that after making love I fell into a lotus sleep.
I heard her name whispered countless times,
I forgot my own. Lost in that unsyllabled whisper
I disappeared too, not only the name.
Or perhaps only the name took me away.
I saw her visage as I see it now:
in a dream, now I paint it -- it was more real.
Before sleep, consumed by kisses
and drained by my foreign lust
it had almost vanished from reality.
I do not remember her visage, in my mind,
my memory, for her, became the drawing.
Countless times, so as not to forget.
That visage, and that fleeting smile
-- as the court poets write --
the flowers she gathered in the garden,
and the magpies in their golden cages
(they spoke to her, she smiled),
and the slippers she put on by herself
dismissing the handmaids, after the massage,
before the ceremonial celebrations...
Now that I don't know why I left
and can't remember if it was for her or another grief
I can forever draw her face
and her life, and her footprints
and the breath that revealed her name to me in a dream.
Or -- tired, frustrated creator
gaze at the visage of the Japanese courtesan
appearing at the bottom of the cup while I'm drinking
and in that transparent porcelain dream of her face
and in that oolong fragrance and memory of the flower
conjure her still looking at me,
her, from Xanadu, from the enchantment of China.
Roberto Mussapi
Artworks by Omar Galliani
