AN EVENING WALK

Blow

The Gregale has arrived in the end,
to blow sureties, doubts and hopes away.
The flatland stretches empty and silent,
dazzling with spurious, useless light.
All across the glistening expanse
unknowing pygmies make new homes
out of the chill of utter nothingness.
At the foot of the only mountain,
wait-worn, rag-clad, age-old vestals
ward the extinguished brazier,
in whose basin not even ash is left.
And us? What's become of us?
Us, who used to be one with the fog
and master the mightiest winds?
Us, jugglers of lies and forgers of truths?

We've been watching it happen,
thinking it would go as quick as it'd come.
Now we stand aghast, incredulous,
numbed at the center, void all around.
The Gregale's up. It will not fall.

Allargando, Pee

The snow is the seal, the key to it all.
A sweet, soft music.
Empty beer mugs
line up on the oak table
in a famous candlelit tavern
of an ancient institution
where men should be forged,
but only brittle losers are churned out.
A grandiose motif,
crescendo into allargando,
mellowing the gloom,
until the dawn after the last night.
Someone pees on the hanged man's tree,
not only metaphorically,
as he receives immortal verses
from the beyond
he craves and curses at once.
Sublime genius calls for dire tragedy.
Reason, will, humanity.
A raven croaks against the white background.

The Cairn

Ice, as far as the eye can see,

ice everywhere—white, shades of gray and blue.

A few outjutting aiguilles—sparse, sharp.

There always is a meaning, a purpose for everything,

Mom used to explicate—calm but confident.

She’d never been there, not in space, not in time,

yet somehow she always knew.

And now there we are, all of us, in bewilderment,

pulled by an invisible wire,

about to vanish, stuck in ice but fearing fire.

Surrounded, buried, under siege,

clutching tooth and nail at a stack of stones—

we don’t comprehend.

Mom would, but then she couldn’t phrase it.

Our last stand,

against the depths of unembraceable reality.

Orphaned of land and water,

finite over infinite ice,

adoring and imploring a token of a distant past.

One last cry of defy unto the sky.

What it means—who knows—

Mom’s no longer here to try to tell.

Lost to ourselves,

in what it means and in what it doesn’t.

One-time humanity. Petrified memory. Ice.

Where The Steep Road Leads

A child,

I hit the steep road,

rash and thrilled,
not minding where it led.
A boy,

I kept climbing on it,

bound and hot,
not caring where it led.
A young man,

I sped up my pace,

only a bit less keen,
pretending where it led

still didn't worry me.
Today I'm walking

down the other slope at leisure,
as slowly as I can,

whereas the pull of gravity
holds a pretty different view

about my hiking times.
Though I never bothered to understand

where the fast ascending road would lead,
all is finally clear and glaring

in my unyielding mind.
I’m disillusioned but not tired.
The steep road leads to no other place

than the top of the hill.
And now that I've been dropping past

for quite a while,
once again I can't decide

if I really want to know what's next,

what there is at the foot of the hill.

If the road just comes to an end.

An Evening Walk

Weirdly

one evening

at the fall of dusk

along the road to home

seated peacefully on benches

fifty yards or so one from another

dim figures followed me with their eyes

as if they had wanted to check I kept going

without slowing down or abandoning my course.

I watched them too but couldn’t descry their features

while judging from how they kept staring at me as I strode

I could be pretty sure that each of them bore my very semblance.

Alessio Zanelli is an Italian poet who writes in English. His work has appeared in over 200 literary journals from 18 countries. His sixth collection, titled The Invisible, was published in 2024 by Greenwich Exchange (London). For more information please visit www.alessiozanelli.it.