VISIO BEATIFICA
If I lay in that pasture with you,
pure green as finches in spring,
and lying in that pasture we could not
remain because the Diablo winds
drove the panicles of wheat
against us, and the half-curled
fronds of the fiddleheads
bent like insatiate lovers will;
we would say the failure was not
ours, wouldn’t we? No, we would
remember our wanting, our desire,
a language written with fresh
meaning, a language spoken
light years away, echoing through
our bloodstreams like a quiet bass,
a flute plucked heroic
and silvery, a sound distilling
any thought of vanity, sound
that could almost break
in one’s hands like the hiss
of last light on ripening berries ,
berries bright in their wetness,
Klimt-bright and golden.
VISIO BEATIFICA (TRANSLATION)
Se mi distendessi con te in quel prato,
verde come i fringuelli d’aprile,
e in quel prato non potessimo
restare perché i venti diabolici
sferzavano i grappoli di grano
contro di noi, e le foglie semichiuse
piumate delle felci
si piegavano come la volontà inestinguibile degli amanti;
dichiareremmo che l’errore non era
nostro, vero? No, rivivremmo la nostra sete, la nostra fame
in patii composti da un significato puro,
un linguaggio parlato
a due passi da casa, sinfonico attraverso
le corde del nostro cuore come un basso soave,
un flauto suonato eroicamente
e argenteo, un’eco che affina
ogni nozione di arroganza, una voce
che potrebbe quasi sbocciare
nelle mani come il fischio
di splendore finale sulle bacche in via di sviluppo,
frutti luminosi nell’umidità,
brillanti e dorati come Klimt.
TAORMINA
We walk the hills of Taormina ,
above the Ionian sea,
walk the attendant trails,
narrow, difficult,
where purple vinca spill
into gullies of stone
and where we lie down
among the white lilies
and the hoofprints of wild boar,
mottling our bellies, our backs,
meaning the volcanic land
stamped with history—bright
wreckage of desire,
where the blooms of honeybees
swoop in the rugged work
of glory and death; for sex, too
is their companion.
Nothing refreshes us more
in the scant shade of oleanders,
nothing presses us closer to the genesis
of creation, the open world of surplus
and sap, all manner creatures know
of majestic energy, guiding us
with genial voices of whirr and whisper.
Bio:
Leonore Mirabile Wilson is a college English and creative writing teacher from Northern California. She is on the MFA Board at St Mary’s College of California. Her poetry books are Western Solstice (Hireath Press) and Tremendum, Augustum (Kelsey Press). Leonore’s work has been in The Iowa Review, Unruly Catholic Women Writers, Trivia: Voices of Feminism, Third Coast, Prairie Schooner, Quarterly West, Upstreet, Madison Review, Laurel Review, Pif, etc. Her historic cattle ranch and family home in Napa Valley were recently destroyed in the LNU fire.
