Good day
There are days that fold in two, like sheets.
One day my lungs folded in two, they were tired of living.
They thought I was dying, still, no one managed to overcome the temptation to hurt me.
Death engenders awareness and anger, and awakens the stone a little bit. For myself, I would be resurrected in death with that little bit of joy left in me, the memory of the asylum, the cheerful laughter in the gardens of madness, that stolen apple, the roses eaten alive. We loved flowers like beasts.
I told Vanni that at night the roses climbed high and glided into the street where there was freedom. In the nuthouse they had accustomed us to the dream, like the dream of freedom.
Then outside, once they tracked me like a fox, they put me in prison, they wanted to send me away: yesterday I fell in love, today I’m not anymore.
* * * * *
The demolished house
After useless efforts to keep it upright, the house finally collapsed, it was demolished as a disgrace. But when I demolished the house I found nothing more. My name was removed from the doorbell: you who want to fall in love with me, ring God’s doorbell and He, the eternal custodian of my life, will answer you. But how long will this wound that passes through the abdomen last, this terrible headache, and this hope of not dying?
I played with life, now I have to take it seriously because a thousand surgeons threaten me. It’s an army of surgeons, an army of booksellers.
I have learned to be afraid every night that the surgeon will cut my throat.
I’m sure that at night a vampire comes: if before, my dreams were idyllic, now I don’t feel kisses on my brow, and I bend in two to vomit. The surgeon has won the war of words.
But despite the surgeon saying that I am a lunatic, the great poetry of Sappho persists, which says: “The moon has set and Pleiades fades in the middle of the night and I lie alone in my bed.”
The carpenter took a path like no other, to remain alone; nobody understood.
* * * * *
The Angelic Plant
I need the friendly medicine of the garbage bin, of those frivolous and stupid things that make life beautiful.
What was the madhouse? There was no love. There was an absolute disinterest there that could incinerate our spirit; thank God, in the madhouse, the soul was dead.
Then, the carpenter came, a great heartbreaker who leapt from one trunk to another like Tarzan. I don’t know who sent him, but while I hammered a nail, he so honored me with his gaze and I fell from the pear tree. I was hurt so badly, when I don’t see him, I weep.
Speaking of pears, in the garden we have a beautiful plant that no one waters much: it is always lovely, it’s always fresh. We say that no one waters it, it refreshes itself.
I look at the life of the plant and think that the carpenter is there and gives me an amazing welcome. Under the plant the carpenter has set a table but someone else is seated there.
The plant is my doubt and when they ask me where the poems are born, I would like to ask this angelic plant how its roots are nourished.
* * * * *
The wives
The wives are always in the middle of the train tracks to prevent the train of happiness from starting.
It’s a long, long convoy, with only two passengers on board, who never know what to do.
The wife is scary. The wife is the conductor. The wife is the private investigator.
The wives ask for the passport.
Giuliano Grittini has printed me a passport on a shirt, because I don’t want to make up my identity card: I don’t want to do it again because they will ask me how many years it will continue to misstate my identity. At the police station, you can’t say that you ran after the train cars of happiness, always hijacked by the wives. I don’t know, they are journeys that don’t last long.
I lost time and money running after stupid wives who had foolish husbands, and, in fact, my beautiful love. Saturday and Sunday you stay with your wife, while I report twenty times that I lost a man: If I say he wasn’t mine, they look at me with suspicion.
I know very well that in Italy, thefts are well tolerated. But who has been robbed? The wives? The friend? Or the Postman?
It’s Friday evening and no publisher has paid me yet …
* * * * *
Notes:
“Good day” — “Vanni” is Giovanni Scheilwiller, the first to publish Merini’s poems on the recommendation of Eugenio Montale. He was also one of the few who regularly visited her in the asylum.
“The demolished house” — “The surgeon has won the war of words” … Merini uses the word ‘sintassi’ which translates as ‘syntax.’ However, because she follows that line with the reference to the surgeon calling her a ‘lunatic,’ I have translated the phrase as ‘the war of words’.
“The wives” — “Giuliano Grittini” is a photographer whose portraits of Merini appear in her books. He was also a close collaborator on multi-media projects and a significant presence toward the end of her life.
* * * * *
Alda Merini was born in Milan in 1931. The darling of post-war Milanese literati while in her teens, she published her first poems at 21. In 1953, she married Ettore Carniti, the owner of a bakery and pastry shop in Milan, and published her first book, La presenza di Orfeo, the same year. Her two daughters were born respectively in 1955 and 1958. After the publication of her second book, Tu sei Pietro, in 1961, she ceased writing for two decades. In 1965, she entered the Paolo Pini asylum in Milan and was diagnosed with bipolar disorder for which she received electroshock treatments. She remained there until 1972, occasionally spending brief periods with her family. During this period, she gave birth to two more daughters. Her husband died in 1983. By 1986, she was able to live alone in her Milan apartment, and over the next 20 years she published several more collections and an autobiography. The years of isolation from her family, especially her children, left her intensely aware of her “otherness.” Rose Volanti, published by by Piccola Casa Editrice Aquaviva in 2007, is preoccupied with this condition and her clinical experiences. Twice nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature, she received the Premio Librex Montale prize in poetry and many other accolades. Much admired and beloved at the time of her death in 2009, Merini received a state funeral in Milan.