The Barbarian and the Princess

To you who observe with your bistro eyes my discontents

You defuse me with a smile, you neutralize me with a love…

Ivan Pozzoni, a poet and writer from Italy, shares his poetry

Ivan Pozzoni was born in Monza city of Italy in 1976. He introduced Law and Literature in Italy and the publication of essays on Italian philosophers and on the ethics and juridical theory of the ancient world. He collaborated with several Italian and international magazines. Between 2007 and 2018, different versions of the books were published. He was the founder and director of some literary magazines. He is included in the Atlas of contemporary Italian poets of the University of Bologne and figures in the great international literature review of Gradiva. His verses are translated into French, English and Spanish. In 2024, after six years of total retreat of academic studies, he returned to the Italian artistic world and melts the NSEAE Kolektivne (New socio/ethno/aesthetic anthropology).

THE BARBARIAN AND THE PRINCESS

To you who observe with your bistro eyes my discontents

You defuse me with a smile, you neutralize me with a love

As enduring as a Compact Fluorescent Lamp,

Becoming aeriform, neon, argon, krypton,

Maybe it’s the krypton that deactivates my Superman cravings,

Climbing up my spine with catlike paws,

Dissuading me from gobbling, from drinking, from brawling, from stopping writing.

 

Princeza romana, eu sou seu bárbaro,

I keep wearing white tank tops in my black underwear

Not washing the dishes, banging on the keys,

Better than washing the keys and banging on the dishes,

I kidnapped you on a raid on the coasts of Gaeta,

Enchanted by you, late-modern Circe,

Capable of turning pigs into men,

Pig’s heart is equal to the human heart,

You alone have understood this, in twenty years, with your insulinous carefreeness,

With your insecurities, with your premenstrual breakdowns, with your questioning face,

Always capable of disconcerting me, square mime destined to go bald,

Without replacing me.

 

Princeza romana, eu sou seu bárbaro,

Yet without being able to dedicate Odi barbare to you,

i am not equipped to hate anyone, or to mix meters,

– What shall we do, half a meter? – better my aptitude for dueling,

Ro rocamboling, half Cyrano de Bergerac and half Socrates,

I’m convinced that you prefer me whole, and long-life,

Not having the ambition of the modern woman

To turn her man into an asshole.

***

AT THE TAVERN OF SOLID LOVE

My little love, solid, you, today, fell

And I was not there to support you, with my aggressive biceps

Of a barbarian from the northern forests, my face painted blue,

Lying in the spasmodic berserksgangr of drinking from the skulls of the vanquished,

It all begins with a trembling, chattering of teeth and a feeling of cold,

Immense rage and a desire to assault the enemy.

 

My little love, fragile, you, today, fell,

And there is a tavern behind our house, all brianzola, your new world,

There is a tavern that serves a hundred and a hundred types of risotto

To spread on your wounds and on your skinned knees,

Where I, imperative man, can still interpret every amber darkness

In your wise child’s eyes, manipulating the kaleidoscope of your irises,

Voluntarily uncovering my flank to the dagger of your arctic lucidity.

 

If not a tavern, our love, resembles us: we eat and live,

Remunerating each other, victories and defeats, hôtellerie, we bustle and eat,

Until the innkeeper Godan, the god of stubborn ‘poets’, slams a mug of mead on the table

Invite us to dance at Walhalla, Mocambo a contrario, dance far away, to the end of the worlds,

You will return to the simple freshness of your sea, you wandering caetan siren of sand,

And to me the fog-damp earth of the valley without ascents or descents will not weigh on my zinc.

 

In the ancient taverns of solid love continue to mix fog and sea-water,

Outside thunderstorms, lightning and thunder, liquefied by the cloudburst everything is drying out, 

And we, we eat and live, we bustle and eat, sheltered, in our reserve of happiness,

Aware that, hovering in the air, in the long run,

The misty ice crystals will flow into the sea.

***

MUM, I AM AN AUTISTIC

Mum, I’m an autistic, not a municipal transport company autistic

I know in your mother’s heart you always dreamed of settling down as a state employee,

Without the worry of a time card to punch and unemployment

Doing eighteen hours a week, three months off, with the anxiety of defiscalising repetition.

 

Ma, i am an autistic, bad luck has decided to crown, me, as a writer

No, ma, I don’t write therapeutic remedies, no invoice, like the doctor,

I have explained to you a hundred times that I deal in endiads and alliterations

I dialogue, every night, with ghosts and communicate with Martians,

And, by now, like the Villa, no ma, not the baker of via Mentana

I mix Latin, dialect and the average Italian as a seasoned courtesan.

 

Ma, I’m autistic, i speak in distich, or in anapestic,

But go on, you understand, it’s not like I’ve become spastic,

At most flexible and elastic, says so even the troika,

Thrown into life with a rocket like I was Laika,

Victim of the artistic environment’s lack of communication

Nailed, backwards, on my cenotaph the epitaph: “! Here lies an autistic man”,

Since no one can catch me in any verse

Or ma, don’t bother me, I’m a deviant.

_________________

Read: Gul Makai – Poetry from Italy