\n That matter engenders contagion<\/em><\/p>\n
That matter engenders contagion
\nif interfered with in its deepest fibres
\ncut out from its mother like a veal calf
\nlike the pig from its own heart
\nscreaming at the sight of its torn entrails;<\/p>\n
That this destruction generates
\nthe same energy that blazes out
\nwhen society turns on itself, the temple’s veil torn
\nand the king’s head axed from the body of the state
\nuntil the faith healer becomes the wound;<\/p>\n
That the hearth’s embrace is radiation
\nnature’s pyre which unravels
\nhelplessly before the smiling company
\nso as to effect the slightest increase
\nof the surrounding temperature;<\/p>\n
That the form of every production implies
\nbreaking and entry, fission, a final leavetaking
\nand that history is the act of combustion
\nand the Earth a tender stockpile of firewood
\nleft out to dry in the sun,<\/p>\n
is hard to credit is it not?<\/p>\n
From Esercizi di tiptologia<\/strong> (Exercises in Typtology), 1992<\/p>\n II. As you lie beside me I edge closer From Esercizi di tiptologia<\/strong> (Exercises in Typtology), 1992<\/p>\n III. To play on monuments, to make them sound, From Didascalie per la lettura di un giornale<\/strong> IV. Sunday morning From Disturbi del sistema binario<\/strong> From Valerio Magrelli: The Embrace, Faber & Faber 2009, translated by Jamie McKendrick. ABOUT THE AUTHOR<\/strong> A Professor of French literature at the University of Cassino, he is also a frequent contributor to the cultural pages of several Italian dailies. His poems have been translated into French, Spanish and a number of other languages. In English: Nearsights: Selected Poems<\/em> (translated by A. Molino, Graywolf Press, 1991), The Contagion of Matter<\/em> (translated by A. Molino, Holmes & Meyer, 2000), \u201cInstructions on How to Read a Newspaper”, and Other Poems (translated by Anthony Molino, Riccardo Duranti and Annamaria Crowe Serrano, Chelsea Editions, New York, Chelsea Editions, 2008), and The Embrace<\/em> (translated by Jamie McKendrick, Faber & Faber, 2009, which won the Oxford-Weidenfeld Prize and the John Florio Prize \u2013 Vanishing Points<\/em>, the bilingual edition of this book, was published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" And two night-lights are lit By Valerio Magrelli.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":155,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[484,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42839","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-maintenant","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42839","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/155"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42839"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42839\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42839"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42839"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42839"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n The Embrace<\/strong><\/p>\n
\ntaking sleep from your lips
\nas one wick draws flame from another.
\nAnd two night-lights are lit
\nas the flame takes and sleep passes
\nbetween us. But as it passes
\nthe boiler in the basement shudders:
\ndown there a fossil nature burns,
\ndown in the depths prehistory’s
\nsunken fermented peats blaze up
\nand slither through my radiator.
\nWreathed in a dark halo of oil,
\nthe bedroom is a close nest
\nheated by organic deposits,
\nby log pyres, leafmash, seething resins…
\nAnd we are the wicks, the two tongues
\nflickering on that single Palaeozoic torch.<\/p>\n
\n Our City: Landscape with Skateboards<\/strong><\/p>\n
\nthey turn stairways into keyboards,
\nfrom railings and ramps extracting
\nheraldic arpeggios
\nand gliding, glissando, at such length
\nthey wear themselves out, this excluded
\nbrotherhood of music
\nwith their coded manners
\nand wounded integrity,
\ntheir tribal, adolescent dandyism.<\/p>\n
\n(Instructions for Reading a Newspaper),1999<\/p>\n
\n The Shadow<\/strong><\/p>\n
\nI’m woken by my daughter’s voice
\nwho shouting
\nasks her brother
\nif it’s true the Bomb
\nwhen it explodes
\nleaves the shadow
\nof man on the wall.
\n(Not of \u201ca man”
\nbut \u201cof man” she says.) He
\nagrees that it does.
\nI turn in my bed.<\/p>\n
\n(Disruptions of the Binary System), 2006<\/p>\n
\n<\/strong>For this remarkable undertaking, McKendrick won the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize and the John Florio Prize.<\/p>\n![\"VALERIO](\"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/vmagrelli.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\nValerio Magrelli<\/strong> (Rome, 1957) is the author of five poetry collections, for which he has won among other prizes the Mondello, the Viareggio, the Montale as well as the Premio Antonio Feltrinelli: Ora serrata retinae (Feltrinelli, 1980), Nature e venature (Mondadori, 1987), Esercizi di tiptologia (Mondadori, 1992), Didascalie per la lettura di un giornale (Einaudi, 1999), and Disturbi del sistema binario (Einaudi, 2006). He has published three books of prose: Nel condominio di carne<\/em> (Einaudi 2002), La vicevita<\/em>. Treni e viaggi in treno<\/em> (Laterza 2009) and Addio al calcio<\/em> (Einaudi 2010), as well as critical studies on Dadaism, Paul Val \u00e9ry and Charles Baudelaire and notable translations of Mallarm \u00e9, Verlaine and Val \u00e9ry.<\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/vmagrelli-150x150.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\nas the flame takes and sleep passes
\nbetween us. But as it passes
\nthe boiler in the basement shudders:
\ndown there a fossil nature burns,
\ndown in the depths prehistory’s
\nsunken fermented peats blaze up
\nand slither through my radiator.
\nWreathed in a dark halo of oil,
\nthe bedroom is a close nest
\nheated by organic deposits,
\nby log pyres, leafmash, seething resins…
\nAnd we are the wicks, the two tongues
\nflickering on that single Palaeozoic torch.<\/p>\n