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  • Antonio Amorosi, and: In Praise of Darkness, and: Listen
  • Ray Amorosi (bio)

Antonio Amorosi

Calmly distant. Immaculately toned. We would meet once a month in his office in the North End. A grey room. His clothes were most often dark blue. His eyes were grey. His hands were small with large wrists. He was my father.

When I was a boy I’d twist my legs up close to my belly. When I was a man I sprawled, enjoyed every word as the late afternoon light slid through the wooden blinds and hit the blonde eagles on his carpet till they almost danced.

We’d both have double anisettes and soda in the last years. [End Page 138] He’d shift meticulously, lean forward.

Expect nothing that heals. Always let it come as a surprise. Weakness is a sure killer but fear will keep your ears full, alert to the wrong footfalls, the ones who romp in the attic at night just before dawn, and inside the walls. Never be fooled, it’s not the wind.

Someday you will praise everyone. Then speak of yourself as an enemy. Listen most urgently to those who love you so you can find out their shame. Only at that time should you act.

When I’m dead build a barn, or better yet find a very old one. Pray that you die with the animals, the innocent roaming toward you. Never be a harbor for bitterness.

Before you were born I was a boy in Benevenuto. Mourning doves would wake me and the lemons were already sliced. This was a kindness I could never return. So I just took it and was grateful for the taking. We would nod to one another as we parted. This man of mixed dialects, this great grandnephew of Garibaldi, this father.

In Praise of Darkness

Inside the very old, grey barn shrews pull mice into corners. At dawn it is still so dark in here that the tiny mice bones shine like four suns in the sky at noon.

Where are the rooster and his friends? I left a window very open. They are all gone, not a feather left.

I could sell everything at the lowest price only to have [End Page 139] more letters appear in slim, long envelopes with the fact of more death, more sacks.

I lay my face along a saddle. Rare coins pile up to my knees.

Listen
for Kabir

In sickness one still wanders with dogs. Along the muddy marsh trails to the ocean I let them push me where they want. One lusts for waste, another to smell the withered heather for as long as the scent remains.

Looking at myself closing in from the sea I know harbors are sure but there’s a sadness in them. The sadness of a drop of blood, of safety, of knowing too much.

Only alone at the edge of a lion’s skill like now with no guidance or moorings can you break yourself down to look at the faces in the water.

Can you look at the lines in your palm as they tell you nothing, can you cut your hands off and pull the boat in.

Listen, until you feel this love of going on all your works are nothing. [End Page 140]

Ray Amorosi

Ray Amorosi’s new book of poems, In Praise, is due out soon from Lost Horse Press.

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