The Bamboo-Garden
on Oxentina!

The Bamboos' Garden…

I know this torrent. I know it
since I was a child
and I tried to catch a chub
or a trout
with an improvised beam,
or I got a large number of crayfishes with four
knotted
earthworms…

I know everything about my essential Liguria,
so rough and tired,
rarely generous
to its people,
who have been always forced
to find out land to till among the stones,
creating terraces
everywhere,
one stone on the other,
carrying in the basket
one fistful of ground after the other, scratched anywhere.

This is the real Liguria,
nothing to do with the other
on the coast,
full of palms and agaves,
araucariae and Aleppo pines…
a reckless and conventional Liguria,
too much exotic,
that could also be called Versilia
or California (yes, that's true, California!).

I identify my Liguria
from the breath of its stones,
in the hazy crags
that smell of genista,
of thyme and wild asparagus in spring;
I recognise it in the old olive trees
with their twisted branches,
when I walk around my house
and address to them
my meditations…

Then suddenly one day,
as if by magic,
a strange garden blossomed by the torrent,
without being properly a garden…
it doesn't have flowers,
but it's so green,
with deep green high tufted plants,
bending on the torrent
and playing hide and seek
among the slate paths…

In the background a house with a grey roof
but red windows…
here's where
my always smiling friend Heidi appears…

From that day on,
it always happens to me,
without even think about it,
I find myself there,
and suddenly in the magic bamboos' garden.
Pietrone

 

 

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