Davide Trame is an Italian teacher of English. He was born in Venice, Italy, where he still lives. He wrote his first poem in English to celebrate a successful students' strike in the school where he still teaches; it was in 1993. His poems have been published in about two hundred literary magazines since 1999, in the U.K, U.S. and elsewhere, and he is very appreciative of the support offered by magazine publishers such as Carole Baldock (Orbis) and Sarah Maclennan (In The Red). He has most recently been published in Poetry New Zealand , New Contrast (South Africa), Nimrod (U.S.), and the Prague Literary Review.

Quelle: poetry p f

Prodigal

It’s back, the fiery stripe on your table,
it’s higher now, out early above the opposite roof,
it gives your shoulders, through the window pane,
a foretaste of the luminous time to come.
Despite the promise of a clawing heat
you welcome it, without reserve.
You silently praise the unframed radiant countenance
and can’t feel close
to the Hindu monks who sit cross-legged
in a row on the beach, the reds and yellows
of their vests and faces full bright
in the broad bountiful light,
while they finger the coral beads in front of the sea
whispering their mantras not to be reborn
and trickles of sand stream away in the wind.
No, you can’t understand them at all,
your heart is “fastened to a dying animal”, no doubt,
but you feel healthy with desire
sitting at your warm illuminated table,
your arms settled on the smooth sunlit cherry-wood lines,
on time’s renewed, homecoming complexion.

Davide Trame
first published in Urthona Magazine, 22, 2005