I do not know if your pale face appeared
to me among the rocks, or you were the smile
form unknown distance, the sloping
ivory brow’s gleam, or the young
Sister of La Gioconda.
O out of vanisehd
spring are those mythical pallors,
O Queen, O adolescent Queen,
yet in your unknown poem
of pleasure and pain,
bloodless girl of music,
you are scored with a line of blood,
in an arc of sinuos lips,
Queen of melodies;
but for that inclined virginal
head, I, the nocturnal poet
watch the vivid stars in the ocean of heaven,
for your sweet mystery,
for your deepening silence.
I do not know if the pale flame
of your hair was the living
sign of your pallor,
I do not know if it was a sweet vapour,
sweet across my sorrow,
smile of a nocturnal face;
I gaze at the white rocks the mute source of the breeze,
and the immobility of the firmament,
and the swollen streams that flow weeping,
and the shadow of human labour curved beyond icy hills
and still through tender, distant skies clear flowing shadows
and still I call you I call you Chimera.
Dino Campana (1885-1932), Canti Orfici, Marradi, Tipografia F. Ravagli, 1914
Cover: Daniel Buren at Galleria Continua (Les Moulins, France), ph. Diana Marrone