I wish to address this letter to UNESCO
for, despite the sadness of my thoughts,
I have not yet lost all hope
That dignity may still be saved.
There’s no need to rifle the archives,
The traces erased are clear to see,
The West has let ambition slip away
Therefore, we must preserve dignity.
The desire to restore the ruins ignites me,
The media announces the competition’s rules,
And neither Bramante nor Wright would be offended
If it is the Creator the author of this design.
I want to ring the abandoned bell tower,
To sound the alarm with a voiceless bell
And I try somehow to reflect in words
Why the poet does not favour democracy.
Where it is the majority that commands
The words of an individual sink unheard,
Whether they drive a Bugatti or wear Roman sandals.
The democrat believes that numbers prevail.
The scene at Golgotha plays on repeat
Glory, Glory to the cross divine!
In every election, it is Christ who loses,
In every election, Jerusalem wins!
Should the Bethlehem birthplace be too distant,
So that shepherds may not stray from their way,
Play Bach’s Prelude in B-flat major,
with all its notes kept on the one word:
Gloria …
Goldberg’s Aria is a paradigm of the world…
The boy’s fingers sound the harpsichord
All night long, for the sleepless count.
If the true motive is the sleepless count,
The language of music softens his pillow …
Just as photography gave impetus to Impressionism,
The invention of the pendulum preceded the Baroque.
When the religion of Art demands asceticism,
The table, scuffed by the pen, gives voice …
Mirrors in paintings reflect
From Van Eyck through Velázquez,
And Manet hung one in the bar of the Folies-Bergère.
What an echo…coming down the years,
The grand chiaroscuro of Caravaggio, heard
When Coppola masterfully sundered
Darkness from light in the Godfather’s room.
And since I attempt to become familiar
With the sound of the echo,
I want to find a motive
To plant this poem firmly into water
Like the bricole in the Venetian lagoon.
Men sacrifice their dignity for progress
To receive benefit from the current trend …
Going back to the ancestor of Pilate
The Athenian Meletus,
To have the right to curse Socrates,
To have the right to rob you of your right
To live life with dignity to the end.
An era that sinks into the mire
Prohibits the galleon from raising sail.
And the truth, if I understood correctly,
Is not what it should be,
But rather,
The great idea voiced in the tavern
And not in a parliament elected by the people.
For the poet to escape the verdict of the finite,
He attempts somehow to find the words
“love + – wings + alpha” to survive,
For life to overcome
The certain diagnosis of death.
If “love + – wings + alpha” survive the storm,
Then dignity, too, may perhaps survive.
And when the bread is soaked in wine,
And in blood
And in words,
The chalice filled to the brim,
Tears will revive dead flesh,
Plain words will be turned into a poem …
The country will be transformed into a homeland …
And the choir will enter and acclaim
– Axios!
Endnotes
