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Beginning With The Moon

by Davide Trame  

You opened the shutters at dawn,
the weather was clear and it was very cold,
you took in the still
mountains’ diamond outlines,
jagged edges like blades,
Moon and Venus hanging there
just above the top.
Bright, round moon’s face like
a cat’s, or a child’s, when they stare
stunned by their own presence.
You called me to the balcony
so I could see those essential shapes,
radiant rotund fullness
above massive stillness.
For some reason I missed Venus,
I was shivering and couldn’t locate it,
you were surprised at how easily
one can lose sight of dots
as of directions and the plain
presence of things.

Later we walked, or daydreamed,
on the narrow road to the deep north,
that was a railroad once, and at once
everything was both present and past,
our crackling steps on the freshly raked snow,
the rocks carved into the aching blue,
the instantaneous neatness of frost
after skiing in the wood, frost
on our guide’s eyelashes, on skin
slightly burnt by it, and the very words
frosted too, swarming away on the snow
like flashes of spun sugar,
or encrusted like the ice on my beard
of thirty years before
when I had first knocked on your door
on the last night of the year.

So, we began with the moon
above knuckled mountains,
like a meaning
simply unveiled.
Memory’s countenance
slashed by the present’s blade.

By Davide Trame

Davide Trame, a native of Venice, Italy, teaching English for thirty years, began writing in English in 1993 – a poem to his class to celebrate their successful petition for a decent school building as a replacement for the miserable place they endured.

A particular perception or series of flashes have given him poems as have moments connected with the light of a day and a sudden memory. Poems, he thinks, impose themselves with or without our volition; it's often useless to "ask" a god for them because they have a will of their own.

For Davide a poem often arrives at dawn, so he gets up and starts writing, at home, on the train going to work. In two-three hours, more often in two-three days, the poem takes a definitive shape. While writing there is always a feverish joy, which gives him an energy he never has otherwise.