Extracts from Aurelia, pianeta taciturno – Giampaolo De Pietro

This poetry collection by Giampaolo De Pietro has inspired the musical album This is the sound I make when I disappear, sound environments and/or musical excerpts created by Riccardo Righi for The Figurehead/ a musical project that explores the relationship between sounds and emotion, looking for either in the most unusual places. The music flows as a narrative, free from the strictures of traditional song structures, transcending words and ideas. Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the___figurehead/

Aurelia was walking. A special reader of steps, for her slender figure walking was like reading.

Aurelia camminava. Camminare era come leggere, per il suo asciutto fisico da lettrice speciale di passi.

***

I went beyond and never. And yet I left and returned. I record ever advancing peripheries of time. It doesn’t run away either by day or night, it disguises itself and inhabits, like a stranger.

Sono andata oltre e mai. Eppure sono andata e ritornata. Registro periferie di tempo, avanza sempre. Non scappa di notte o di giorno, si traveste e sconosciuto abita.

***

The road lines up clothes like breaths, light is always alive and sleeps in darkness, like us. It must accelerate resist, measure things with periods. It must say to the red that it’s yellow and to the green that it’s blue, it must put a period on rain and snow on the winter’s day, which calls the run ups from floor to floor deaf.

La strada incolonna vestiti come respiri, la luce vive sempre e dorme al buio, come noi. Deve accelerare resistere, mettere una misura di punti. Deve dire giallo al rosso e verde al blu, punto al piovere e neve al giorno d’inverno, che chiama sorde le rincorse dal pavimento al pavimento.

***

At nighttime, it makes trees meant for drawing. Life, is not like something; perhaps it’s more or less like someone experiencing it in their various personal collective, occasional verbs, repeated ad infinitum – how come infinity is like the horizon, mom? He was three years old, the son, when he asked this question. Aurelia finds it again when she is thirty-five. She moves it, renews it.

Di notte, fa gli alberi da disegno. La vita, non è come qualcosa; più, o meno forse come qualcuno che la compie nei suoi vari verbi, personali collettivi, saltuari ripetuti all’infinito – come mai l’infinito è come l’orizzonte, mamma? Ha tre anni, il figlio a questa domanda. Aurelia, a trentacinque anni la ritrova. La sposta, la rinnova.

***

They take the long boulevard, as the afternoon is coming to an end, the roads leading home – solitude on its back, weighs like bread. The Roma child gets rid of his shoes at the corner of the porch, maybe his parents are fighting back there, they don’t see him – Aurelia unbinds her smile and it doesn’t matter if tiredness has soiled our feet – there are steps that go and shoes that almost ask us to take them off, in a hidden corner.

Fanno il viale lungo, a fine pomeriggio, le strade fino a casa – solitudine riversa, come il pane pesa. Il bambino Rom si libera delle sue scarpette all’angolo del portico, i genitori forse litigano lì dietro, non lo vedono – Aurelia slaccia il sorriso e non importa se la stanchezza ci ha sporcato i piedi – ci sono passi che vanno e scarpe che quasi ci domandano di scalzarle, in un angolo nascosto.

***

It’s softness, that thinks time. Almost like for every creature, it’s softness. We lay down, after long days – a bridge looks onto us. “You too almost border on nothingness” a poet writes to his sister.

È la delicatezza, a pensare il tempo. Quasi come per ogni creatura, la delicatezza. Ci sdraiamo, dopo lunghe giornate – un ponte ci affaccia. “Anche tu confini quasi col nulla” scrive un poeta alla sorella.

***

On a summer route, father mother daughter travel to the south of Europe. They are Russian or Ukrainian. Mother and daughter read a lot, when it’s nap time – it passes the baton to the page, appearing among the printed characters. The girl, most naturally, leans her head on her mother’s belly, -dad is bewildered as he looks at them, speaks to them; complicity makes the trip more fun for everyone.

In rotta estiva, padre madre figlia viaggiano a sud dell’Europa. Sono russi o ucraini. Madre e figlia lettrici forti, quando si fa l’ora del sonnellino che fa staffetta con la pagina e compare fra i caratteri stampati, la ragazza poggia la testa sul ventre della madre, naturale – il papà le guarda attonito, parla loro; la complicità rende il viaggio più lieto a tutti.

Extracts from Aurelia, pianeta taciturno, Giampaolo De Pietro (Il Ponte del Sale 2024)

Giampaolo De Pietro writes verse and is a photographer of distractions. He has published the following booksç Tre righe di sole (Salarchi Immagini 2008), La foglia è due metà (Buonesiepi Libri 2012), Abbonato al programma delle nuvole (L’arcolaio 2013), Dal cane corallo (con disegni di Francesco Balsamo, Arcipelago itaca 2019) and the most recent Aurelia, pianeta taciturno (Il Ponte del Sale 2024). His collaboration with English musician Craig Tattersall has yielded “Saint Autumn – Cloud | Precipitation” (2021 Ur Audiovisual, Toronto, Canada) and “When it happens in the forest, evening falls and the green turns blue” (2024 Umbrella Publishing, Salford, UK) and consist of sound, photography and poetry, which can be found in book and cassette format, or book and CD format (55 copies) .