Dead man in the fire
his stretched skin
a burnt out pink
like dead paper,
only the label doesn't burn
and the string.

It's reflected, enormous, in my eye.

**

On the dune of the nose
a mark, only,
rough-hewn,
a hollow to collect liquids.
The very eyes have a fading hue.

**

Half a look
red,
a horizon
a hanging rag stooping to the black hole,
to the half screen.

Meanwhile,
under the fire,
pendant of bones
the sheltered face,

the respected symmetry of the dead.

**

Fingerprints have fallen in the dark
and shrunk.

They got soaked
then were immediately dried
by an overkilling draught

coming out of a dim
but deep opening

here,
just above the wrist.

**

Crooked stigmata
mark from a mistaken aim
now a dried scar,
a navel,

but without organs inside
just tubes.

**

You lose your eyes
they drown in the sea of humors
where glassy melts into watery
and the pupil too,

some dough falls onto my hands-
the well of all photons.

**

In the curves of the hands
in the loops,
see that misfallen
shade,
plumbago, almost

and the shell-nails
match with the spots of the skin.

**

You are the very closest to sleep,
paper bracelet
label of a dispatched suitcase-
submerged
in this odd remnant
without a request.

Fish love your pallor,
bare hand.

**

A hug in the invisible air
like the arm of a headless crane
standing
as in a far-off attention

the skin is so rough:
the last shiver while freezing.

**

Slips out the blanket from the face
the plastic shroud,
dull like sour milk,
reveals two empty plates
two shutters fallen on the bone,
every speech is vain.

**

Finger touching finger
around the wrist,
it's the mark of the sock:
it's the pause of the liquids
with time.

**

There is no sample
of that sound,
you can only imagine that step
or the drop that falls
and fades it.

**

Poison-dried, not a drop.
A desert in the body:

the very blood is dust
from the wound
like grains from a sandglass

lost outside of the clockwork.

**

The nails,
deaf to silence
keep on working
because they know
that darkness has no grips

everything is straight and smooth
like a well.

**

Under the surface wind and bones
but from here light and on the table
the shape
covered
the dress on the face,
a wave of detergent
that blinds you.

**

A last photogram between the eyelashes
a pupil still in its frame
tile-like
the curdled tear:
gets caught on the film light and still veils

the glassy eye
the marble, glazed with oversleeping.

**

Years sunken
in the emptiness
of the ear
time dissolves,
a stained eye
with commas and full stops left
under the black well of the voice.

A body felted by wrong washings
and some dark spots
won't go away
they are like holes
made by bugs:
you're moth-eaten.
At every cough
you put out a candle
your heart is darkness.

Translation: 1998, Elisa Biagini