ANDREA ZANZOTTO translated by Wayne Chambliss

Yes, the snow again

“Are you glad you came into this world?”

Child: “Yeah. Because of the 7-11.”

What will become of the snow

what will become of us?

A curve in the ice

and then and then…but the pines, the pines

will rise to the snowline, until the last age,

inscribed by pines. Sic et simpliciter?

And why should it be—the pine world the snow world—

and why should it become—

fe-fi-fo-fum,

I smell an Englishman, naughty-totties—

and why should it become

a we, for us, of use?

And is having value as a person and an im-person

both possible and im-possible?

Hölderlin: “we are a sign without significance.”

But where do the two series fuse?

And is it true? And what will become of us?

And you, why? Why you?

And why and what do the big objects do,

the thing-causes,

radiant and radiating?

The stellar nucleus

concludes the ice-curve—

verses and inventions, calligrams, excess—yes,

but what will become of the snow, of the pines,

of what is and is not

there, at the bottom?

There is no us, and yet

the snow is aware of us:

of what burns,

of what is unavoidably fugitive or dead,

fugitive or died.

Good snow, good shadows, listen. Glisten. Glide.

There are those who will never weary

of restitching—of snitching, munching, tickling—of squirreling

scenes we have prepared.

There are those—

of this, I have always been aware—

who will not tire

of reacclimation

to location, to loveliness, to the lovely

modulus of archaic skies,

acidulous as Cimbric nonsense, to seminated images,

darkenings stymied and edelweiss stars

and all that is all white, all noble:

the big bad wolf

with his great big tail,

and the bus in the snow,

the red one.

Whitesnow, whitesun, whiteaccumulation of my old I.

But soon the naughty-totties

will set off

for the big 7-11

at the foot of the great wood,

and will find

pap so delicious so good

for you precious,

precociously planned,

ferociously programmed by pappy

for everything, everyone, you (sniff sniff

gnam gnam yum yum slurp slurp:

as if to make the funny pages last forever).

But here, alas,

the colors are more or less ersatz.

Plasmon, nipiol, auxol. Sequins and figurines.

Ersatz. More or less.

It’s better there—snowed underhand, snowed underfern…

[o moon, by now,

even magnolia, even the comet

of snow in flux, influx of snow]

But what will become of us?

What will become of the snow, of the garden,

of free will and destiny,

of those who have lost their way

(and the snow climb climbed—as she pined away) in the snow?

And what do those in life there say?

And what says the source of saying?

And does the source exist? Am I not

more than an I-you-these-I’m down here,

clippety cloppety cl cl,

uncommunicative, excommunicated, all miscommunication?

Even so, on a higher level,

above the coma the semi-comma and the margin,

there is a rustle a murmur a cicada-yadda

—even still—for a minum or semiminum,

bichromal semichromal nanochromal

thing-thingies,

sciences, tongues and prophecies,

white news black news blue

news of gods of new

souls and stimuli,

libido and greed

and their deft

prestidigitations.

It’s like this: smells, squirrels inverted,

the snow spills into clear,

crisp “waters which, once diverted,

despair, disperse, and disappear”

past the big store

at the foot of the wood,

where the tots are picking gummy-yummies…

And the sickles and hammers,

and the crescents and crosses,

the design-designs

and the sugar-wool spun out of psyche?

And tradition’s transmission—is it handed around?

And the avant-garde—has it found, has it found?

And is the con-consumption of the consumers

where the trough is—in the slop-mop, in apostasy?

And what of their enthusiasm? Of assumption? Of ecstasy?

And what do they say up there, in life—

there, in parting, there in part?

What’s being hatched peeled revealed

in that slim in that dim

within the little nut, within the almond?

And what of the thousand milk-teeth teething?

And the pine. And the pines-ines-ines

in profile and in profiles

never sewn never severed,

ines-ines beside in front

behind the eternal the external the internal (the landscape),

before behind on every side,

the pines—how are they, are they alright?

Said to the snow: “You won’t ever leave me, right?”

And now the tweezers. And now the clamp.