The Pivot of a World That Never Stops
Poem in English kung Kristang, written at Poesiaeuropa 2023
After Andrea Zanzotto’s Eterna riabilitazione da un trauma di cui s'ignora la natura
I’m not sure what you’re afraid of,
but I don’t need to know. I don’t need you to stop
worrying, or warring with yourself,
or walking, endlessly and intensely
along your own faultlines,
your own ways of rewriting yourself
that should have been mine.
Forget me not.
I have held in tudu bentu di mar kung angkoza ta anchoh
bagah-bagah. Kifoi bos ta skundeh
na isti ila? Kifoi bos ja beng naki—
pra rochoh
ngua nubu destinu? Pra bendeh
bos onsong sa insecurities?
Ke bos onsong sa lei
ki bos lembrah tudu otru jenti kereh
kauzu olotu onsong sa mulera
impoku mutu tantu lebi.
I hope you' don’t find me scary
or a little too Other. A little too unknown. A little too many
ways of saying goodbye to trauma. Of trying too hard to
overexcavate geological time
so that history can stop oscillating so madly —
so that culture, and identity and memory
can form sometimg that is just a little too much of
a straight line.