2024. 9. 29 Sun

Einstein Kaffee at the East Side Gallery. Sunny and the usual lofi jazz. Fond memories of all the poems I have read here begin to merge into this moment, although instead of being alone with a book, I have F next to me this time playing his colour game. In the morning we packed up almost everything, took the last of the things to his new place and zipped up the big luggage I have to take with me tomorrow morning. After labour now we enjoy the few hours of sun in the laziness of the afternoon.

In order to keep up my little habit until the last day, I looked for a poem by Pascoli, the poet from Fra’s town that he had mentioned to me several times. I found Seamus Heaney’s translation of L’aquilone. As I read it, the face of the young Pascoli (whom I don’t know) takes the form of the little Fra’s, for the obvious reason that we had talked about his kiting as a boy. We were lying on the grass next to the lake together and a girl was trying to get her kite into the air. F told me that whenever he had family and friends over for the holidays, he would ask around for materials to make his kite. 

In my head, the boy running up the hill, breathless, is Fra, flushed and hot and soft. Full of blond hair, playing alone. I call out to him as hard as I can that I will find him in the future, that I will come to him and we will fly the kite together. The wind is so strong and the kite so high that I can’t tell if he heard me. I have a feeling that he might have been the kite himself. 

I will write here a verse that seems to describe exactly what I feel now: It rises and it carries ever higher, the longing in the breast and anxious feet, and gazing face and heart of the kite-flier.

I’m thinking about my life and his, past and ahead, and maybe ours in each other’s. 

Più su, più su: già come un punto brilla 

lassù lassù...