THE POEM OF THE SPANISH POET, by Mark Strand

E' già passato un anno dalla morte di Mark Strand...




IV. THE POEM OF THE SPANISH POET

In a hotel room somewhere in Iowa an American poet, tired of his poems, tired of being an American poet, leans back in his chair and imagines he is a Spanish poet, an old Spanish poet, nearing the end of his life, who walks to the Guadalquivir and watches the ships, gray and ghostly in the twilight, slip downstream. The little waves, approaching the grassy bank where he sits, whisper something he can’t quite hear as they curl and fall. Now what does the Spanish poet do? He reaches into his pocket, pulls out a notebook, and writes:

                              Black fly, black fly
                              Why have you come
                              It is my shirt
                              My new white shirt
                              With buttons of bone
                              It is my suit
                              My dark blue suit
                              Is it because
                              I lie here alone
                              Under a willow
                              Cold as stone
                              Black fly, black fly
                              How good you are
                              To come to me now
                              How good you are
                              To visit me here
                              Black fly, black fly
                              To wish me goodbye