Woodpigeon by Davide Trame

You liked remarking the four lines
its cooing was divided into, the last line
just a single coo, a full stop
or maybe a question mark suspended
between the sky and the maze of branches;
its call the first sound of the day
promising a canopy of leafy alleys
and shading tidy ochre brick walls
with rows of beeches, oaks,
clusters of rowan berries.
Now that you are far away
you know its marvellous monotony
is a further example of the unattainable
eternal present that allures you:
when you feel you are flashing into the past
all you’ll long for will be just one more coo
lasting in its suspension.


Davide Trame, Italy

First by Davide Trame

Early spring, first warm sun, you look at the sea
with a mixed itch of dread and desire,
you know it’s still very cold.
You wait, fidget with a shell, a pebble
and scan the lulling glare of the horizon.
Then step in and walk on
slowly, teeth chattering, heart hammering, water
at your ankles, calves, thighs, almost up to your breast,
your arms still raised in the air –go, you tell yourself,
go, each instant is a leap
and no way to know for sure you will resist,
go, it’s what the bottomless now of your breath
asks first.-


Davide Trame, Venice, Italy

The Opening by Davide Trame

We were on the valley road
in the chattering crowd of the market stalls
when I suddenly looked up over the hill
where silence was pierced
by a single call like a whistle,
a buzzard I thought, at one with
the blue breach in the clouds
along a line of trees.
I kept gazing but I could see
only the skyline.
Then one more time the precise
needle of a sound, a keyhole
into vastness.
The breath of an eye.

A cleansed breath. Alert and quiet like
the unwavering candle of meditation.

You tapped my shoulder and said:
“ Let’s go, you won’t see it, it’s gone.”
I walked on in the strewing chatter
and smiled
at the luminous gap which by leaving
we confirm.



Davide Trame, Venice, Italy