Fronds

Fronds gathers a sequence of quatrains composed in English and structured according to a consistent rhyming scheme. Each poem is built on four lines, generally arranged in alternating rhyme, and shaped by a metrical discipline that seeks balance between sound and sense. The formal constraint is not ornamental but structural: rhythm and rhyme determine the architecture of the thought.

These quatrains are not conceived as autonomous first drafts. They are revisitations of poems originally written in Italian. The present versions attempt to transpose those earlier texts into English while preserving, as faithfully as possible, the original conceptual core. Because the shift in language entails differences in cadence, stress, and lexical field, certain adjustments have been necessary in order to secure coherent rhyme and metrical regularity. Where deviations occur, they serve formal requirements rather than reinterpretative ambitions.

The stylistic register tends toward a slightly archaic or elevated diction. This choice is deliberate. It allows the poems to inhabit a tonal space that is neither colloquial nor strictly contemporary, but reflective and distanced. The language aims for a compact density: images are often compressed, references are elliptical, and emotional states are filtered through metaphor rather than directly declared.

Thematically, the collection moves across recurring territories: absence and memory; the instability of affection; self-scrutiny; regret; seasonal and natural imagery as reflective surfaces of interior states; the act of writing itself as both refuge and exposure. Many poems revolve around relational tension, longing, estrangement, and the friction between what is felt and what can be articulated. Others turn inward, examining fatigue, repetition, routine, and the difficulty of sustaining coherence in the face of emotional flux.

Although some poems adopt mythic, literary, or symbolic references, their origin lies in personal impressions. They arise from brief thoughts, transient encounters, small gestures, ordinary days, remembered conversations, and solitary reflections. In this sense, the book is built upon fugitive experiences: fragments of perception that might otherwise dissolve without record. The quatrain form offers them containment, even when the sentiment itself remains unstable.

No claim is made here to unity of narrative. The poems are not chapters of a single story, nor do they demand to be read as a linear confession. They function instead as discrete transparencies, each allowing a glimpse of a particular mood or moment. Taken together, they form a loose constellation of states of mind, connected more by tonal affinity than by plot.

Fronds presents, therefore, a formal exercise and a personal archive at once: a sustained attempt to test how far thought can be carried by meter, and how far experience can be distilled into four measured lines.

The intention of these pages is not to captivate, persuade, or enchant. They do not seek admiration, nor do they aspire to rhetorical seduction. If, however, even a single image, a solitary rhyme, or a fleeting sensation born within these lines should remain with the reader beyond the moment of reading, if one fragment should settle and endure, acquiring weight or resonance over time, then the purpose of this writing may be considered fulfilled.

Weary, I yet breathe of oysters and lemon,
‘Neath the glimmer of a twilight wan and dreary,
Humming soft as the rain on me yonder bastion;
Too many days to cleanse in mem’ry’s query.

Thou art there as well, today, hung ‘midst the skies;
Who knows if still thou sleep’st or dream’st awake
Of how the fleeting months shall soon demise…
The more so, if in verses their course they take.

…But the taste of the Mistral doth confound,
And this cold sand doth seem as fire’s glow;
With her a year, with Her three; the boughs ‘round
An oak from which I sway, in jest, I know.

…And three years have passed, still I see thee
In a yellowed aura stolen from fate’s hand,
Thy gentle smile, with dawn’s sweet fragrancy,
‘Midst the ruthless shadows of a raven’s land.

Between regret and tales ne’er penned,
The thousand songs that whisper’d o’ thee,
As tho’ they knew thou waitest not, alas,
As tho’ they knew how deadly thou canst be.

Here lingered the steps of thy halting pace,
‘Midst shadows frail and fleetingly spun,
Of trees born in jest, in whimsical grace,
With neither trunk nor bough – yet fronds.

I’ve melted the moon in three wayward years,
In the sea of things we’ll never be or do,
And I speak of these, in verses and tears,
Yet still, ’tis too hard to say I…

Moved am I by the shade of thy flight,
Toward streets veiled in mist and old refrains,
Where tarriance comes with ease in the night,
‘Neath the mournful slumber o’ lanterns’ wan flames.

Wreathed in vapors, my fingers rest,
‘Pon timbers aged by murmurs hollow,
Mid prattlings cast to the echo’s behest,
‘Twixt dream-damp’d notes and silence callow.

Remind me yet why woe must cling,
For that which stirs thee not a whit,
For even night doth sharpen its sting,
As though mere hardships were not fit.

As when the hail at last doth fall,
And I, in films, do lose my way,
In yon most tender scene, to call
To hate, yet love thee here to stay.

The worst of all within this bubble,
Wherein I live with edges lost,
Is the warm stream of glue and trouble,
Upon which rests the glittering cost.

I levitate, lascivious, in dream’s embrace,
Lucid and clear… I return apace,
To cast it upon the parchment wide,
To scratch at my wrist, with all to hide.

One doth lose oneself in pastel’s hue,
Of porcelain, be it frail and worn,
And puff in a carousel anew,
Of unchecked longing, forlorn.

Only a lone shard of emerald green,
From the double glass through which I speak,
The rest’s a mist of cobalt and sheen,
And blood I gaze 'pon my palm, so bleak.

Thou dwell’st ‘twixt eyes I rub in vain,
And a tired chord in minor key,
’Twixt deeds undone in mute refrain,
And rhododendrons fair to see.

I still miss autumn and the carpet made
Of warmed leaves, in orange and golden hue,
And the frosty sea, also shining and so rare,
Yet warmer still than any summer’s view.

Follow me through days I paint ‘n’ weave
With oxymorons and cryptic rhetorics,
While sleeping wakeful, moved, I deceive,
Feigning joy in scholastic metrics.

Our spring is far, yet near it is not to me;
I’m glad of this, thou know’st, for it’s of no need,
For I possess a pen and a page with coffee rings…
And all that green would jar, in the dark, methinks.

At times it hap’neth that I rewrite thy name,
And sometimes, 'tis true, it fills me with dread,
As thou appear’st so grim, a tower of shame,
Rising, demanding, from the waters’ depth.

Today 'tis cinnamon, powdered sugar lines,
Garlands of flesh, and pepper’s fiery gleams,
And all the love I, foolish, still long to sight;
I move it from the plate (unto) ‘nother dream.

Like grimaces 'gainst the gale’s lament,
And aching throes that bid me pine,
Thou art the river, swift and bent,
From yonder bridge whereon I twine.

Let it pour,
I’m fine with it.
The world
Loathes me.

At times thou return’st, yet know’st it naught,
Like Sirius high o’er my humble dome,
And well thou know’st none e’er hath sought,
In woe or weal, such madness lone.

I wandered lone through eventide,
With the selfsame words in pocket deep,
To paint the night in sable dyed,
Wherein no mirth my soul doth keep.

The untamed dew doth soothe my soul,
It darkens and, with cruel hand, mars
The smile of a pink dawn’s stroll,
Which I behold from the final chair.

And lo, a month doth nearly pass away
The warmth of thy salute, 'tis clear to see,
At sunset, once again, doth reach and sway
Mine harmless feigning of a childish glee.

I’ve lost a step, this day, whilst climbing high
The selfsame stairway at the portal’s gate
And now I find myself thy form to tie
In rhymes, within a song’s fairest estate.

I’ve begun to scarcely understand…
Perchance 'tis lack of courage, alas,
Or mayhaps I’ve truly died, my friend,
In that distant, cold May’s morass.

I dig ‘mongst eyes that still do stare,
As doth Orion in the nightly sky,
And speak I with all, yet all declare:
“All’s but delusion, if thou know’st not why.”

I sigh, I puff, and I do loathe myself
For all that I’ve already borne,
For I was running toward the end,
Yet ne’er had I even begun.

I cast a stone into the lake,
And I alone did feel the quake;
Then, by the shore of a stream of faces,
As yestermorn, thou still retracest.

There’s poesy in naught but sun and grace,
E’en in the striving, e’en o’er still waves,
On glassy pools and words of pallid hues;
There’s poesy, too, in the tears I eschew.

I see thee breathe in a manner so strange,
From creases 'neath thine eye, alone and wan,
To a trembling hand that doth derange,
When thou know’st not who I am no more.

No season lives in speech with thee,
For thou, to me, stay’st wakeful still,
Though I do feel thy fall to be
In all I shun, against my will.

Few were the things that yet remained,
When thou didst turn thy gaze at last;
Nay, 'twas not timing nor ‘twas fate:
For thee, I was ever too late, I guess.

It grieves me thou art unperturbed,
To be but blood and ink disturbed,
Now thou hast shut that wretched door;
Why am I the monster evermore?

Perchance I’ve spent me time adrift,
’Neath frozen tears o’ bitter reign,
Yet e’ery breath I draw, though swift,
Aches like the weight of thy disdain.

…If time could bloom anew once more
For those warped tales thy fingers spun,
Then thou wouldst fathom what I bore
Each day ‘twixt spines where dust hath won.

Five gutted stubs in circle drawn
Round sockets drained of dusk and tar,
Four splinters etched on papers’ scorns
Now drowned and sealed in molten scars.

The town’s asleep, clamped tight in pitch,
No pulse nor grip, no root nor plea.
My peace bricked deep in slag and stitch
As thy ghost runs poison into me.

The weekend crusts in marrowed grouts,
The wine fumes’re the man, now. Blurt.
Phlegm. A Christ. All’s crude ‘n soot and clout.
See him stumbling to benches o’ dirt.

Hoped thee’d descend as trench congeals,
This warfare folds ‘neath culm and grime.
Thy blight I leave, thy chaff and thy leels,
And sink my breech through mudful brime.

Thou starest afar while recall still maims,
Thy viol gripped firm as pulses backfire.
We drift, we choke through Bacardi flames,
No chords, no hymns, just fallback wires.

With the temper of the crag rasped by the spume,
I drag to me chamber, let the rind unlace,
I strip off the scrap, let the marrow exhume,
To coil in the vaults where the grit clamps grace.

Thou art the foot past the blanket’s rim,
On a morning shut in February’s murk.
The tome I’ve wrought with me plaid tucked in,
And the inkwell clenched in the blot of the work.

’Tis four in the grip of the morning’s grime,
And I lean on the tumbler, drained and slack.
A portrait, the aspirin, the stave out of rhyme,
And the songbook bruised in the scab of the rack.

I deemed you unlike, in the hush of before,
No blame for the self that would truthfully gleam.
Yet candour, unbridled, will pivot to lore,
Where the centre is selfhood, disguised as a dream.

I’d tender the hours I squander to blur,
To the blots of thy phantom, moulded in trace.
For I sit, as a husk in the brine of the stir,
And death seems the thriftier solace in place.

Who knows if one day I shall find the way
To tell thee in earnest what sense there lay
In turning to void, and by stealth to smuggle
My very mind away, in a speechless struggle.

Mid frost ’mongst the trees I curse and I cry
At Eros, at Athena, and at Orion in the sky
Then drag my nails on another wall
More weary, more living, more foolish in all.

Where has my trusty Rocinante gone?
Where, the rabbit’s hole I deeply loathe?
Where, that chapter I invented from
The most mistaken advice I could know?

Old uncertain chords,
Ay, I’ll seek to sleep…
Would these walls
Their silence keep.

I see no friends in the moon’s wan beam,
But misshapen serpents and long-nos’d sighs;
The keen mental razor of a dark-browed queen,
And the ill-writ list of their sins and crimes.

How swifter the mutual spite grows,
Not the peace within our spoken sips;
Thou shalt find me swinging by the porch
And I’ll find thee in thy third school year.

I would be born this day, 'neath the oak tree,
'Midst foxes and chestnuts framing me 'twixt,
And fade away, then, adrift in thy Greece,
As thou dost sit 'n rhymes, my better Beatrice.

Languid, devoid of will to stand,
To answer me, to never leave me flank,
Thy still bough, no leaves it bears nor extends,
'Tis there, mute and austere, by the bed lamp.

'Midst quarrels of pigeons and passerbys
I flank the bricks of a weathered wall;
Drops from the cornices gravely fly
Frozen and shy, as thy laced cloths.

An ill-wrought canter through wynds o’ yore,
Alien and fearsome, yet cozy and kind,
I seized upon sentences I daren’t vaunt,
And 'midst thousand ditties, I find surmise.

At dawn, dear, I deem it a fortune to ken
E’en but the power to reckon this alone,
That thou arn’t merely a wight 'mong men
With whom I’d wend all wheres I’ll go.

They prate it’s all sinking into garbage,
That on folios no harbour is ever found
Without the gilted crest of a lineage
Or pouches full o’ sins and hounds.

Simplicity’s all I’ve cast to the wind,
’Midst the fissures in the tar, in the chaunts
Of the crusted mortar, in its reek,
In the rain and the lacquer thy fingers flaunt.

I park in the murk, the quiet’s a coin here,
One thou burnish with shreds o’ silk,
'Twixt the lone savour kept in the pinery,
And thy sienna trench, a tad too weary.

Were I to descend to them degree
To tender but one solitary cheer,
I’d have to ignore the blood 'n the lavee,
And the sense of being grown ne’er peered.

Pages upon pages, again, of all yet of little,
As though thou didst feel what I now write,
How it doth take delight to play in the fire
The coal that beareth my visage on the pillow.

Two hours, a cowl, and spenttide words,
Out of the old pub in light yshone,
Where thou thy garments lost to lords,
And I to doom was overthrown.

March hath but will to haste by,
Yet ‘pon my spine, like a wain,
And, were it not for the pain,
I’d be bent this eve of mine.

Thou dost begin to smite, and I do dread,
Lest thine own pistols bear no warding chain;
And lo, the thought doth strike me chest,
That thy swift wrath may loose a deadly bane.

From thy fair window mine I do behold,
While hasting thou dost clothe thy restless frame;
And by the frenzy that thy gestures hold,
I mark thou art more perfect than thy name.

I fain would sing thee tales from grief kept free,
Yet from these pens comes naught resembling light;
And I recall when we did both agree
To watch our lives be torn before our sight.

I quenched all light, to rest in peace full near
Beside the Reaper whom I adore to adore
E’en without speech, her presence I hold dear,
E’en without rhymes that speak her name of love.

Full hard it is beyond the sixteenth day,
For scars and tears that keep their sharpen’d sway,
Not for the weight of scruples in the way,
I limp and press my wounded soul to stay.

Leave me ‘thin these meads,
Bind me to my frenzy’s might;
Conceal the keys from me deeds,
That I may never flee thy sight.

They do proclaim that I have grown,
But I lie as stone, spasms in me mind;
I deem a mere greeting, given lone,
Would wake the will to move and rise.

O, the grey sunsets brim the chalice,
The sign of malady that hath no end;
My back lies ‘pon the streets of Paris,
Yet my feet are chained in hell.

Methinks the sense I lost
Of e’ery passing day
For two hours I gazed nought
Thinking back on dreams away.

Too many moons are lost in the gleam
O’ the memory of how thy name thou speak;
And now the only burden I seem to feel
Is the habit of feigning me own joy and glee.

I admire the eve vanishing into blue,
Whilst ’gainst her mine execrations rise,
’Midst saline ghosts of juvenile gloom,
And sharp effluviums of lost guile.

Thy span doth scorn my ken, whilst I do fare
Unto another star with me folly untethered,
For I was witless then, witless and bare,
And thou wast more splendid than all weather.

When I unlearn mine asocial estate,
Mine morbid dwelling in a languid plight,
When thou dost laugh ‘pon the stairway,
When I weep ‘side thy slumb’ring sight.

And how can thou in ev’ry vellum stay
‘Midst reeks of tobacco and passiflore?
If thou wouldst bear aught from my reach away,
Bear hence the years I squander’d heretofore.

Each muscle in me doth entreat to-day
To rest from all pursuit that seeks to find thee,
Yet breath was lost for some hours o’ waste
Within the drudging monotone of me thinking.

I lock me in the ledger to assay the bleeds,
Beholding the mirth in mildew sore to sear,
For I had deem’d ’twould pass in two years;
I deem’d in sooth that I might wholly heal.

A coffee laced unto the clavier’s tone,
Perchance this is that vaunted “growth” men prize,
To sport with fate without one card well shown,
For, mayhap, I have sought to lose likewise.

From the salt sea there riseth the fell conceit
Of thy not-coming, grim as a sailor’s bane,
And I, a coward, dumb and incomplete,
Do tarry still in my deferrèd goin’ again.

Ever the selfsame words,
Ever the selfsame thought,
And still I trace thy name here,
For that alone sufficeth me.

I cast a stone into the careless stream,
While seated, as me dreams, ‘n a cold spell,
And ev’ry spray that striketh the cheeks
Remindeth me thou art not where I dwell.

This would I give thee, this all and more:
The roseate sunfall ‘mid bosky shades,
The tepid sleep with no rest that I abhor,
For but thine eye, for but thy glance repaid.

I swim ‘mid oceans wrought of meaning
To utter that which thou hast never known,
Albeit mine words unto the void be fleeing,
Albeit thou shalt ne’er read what I wrote.

Array’d in a sheet
Of naught but lies,
I feel me lone within
Within the passer’s tide,

While stewing in the languor of midnoon,
Midst shards that whirl in flight,
With dusty sighs and worms,
Mine eyes grown gloom;
Then I be back to write.

Deserts ‘round, they wide and bare.
How thy far-off estrangement’s grown,
Yet greater hurt I suffer in thy stare
Than when thy want of presence comes.

The paper thistles hang from the ceiling;
The kettle whistles yet more ‘tis a screaming.
It is no feast, today, just a boring evening
Yet still I cheer, whatever the reason.

When mine own temples grips
And in the smoke I slip and wander,
When thou dost burn within my ribs,
I seek to strike the wall and blunder.

I gaze full stern from the balcony,
As close as queen and king they be;
It grieveth not to bide in solitude,
Save that I need must bide with me.

They be romantic oxymorons,
Which thou unknowing climbest;
Semantic springboards o’er on
A pool, one o’ the evilest.

The suspect eventide descendeth low
On golden silks abandon’d to crumple
As shoes forsaken by the river’s flow;
I be lost within this damp tremble.

Mine frozen hands do rummage ‘midst the fold
Of a romance that I do not commence,
For ‘twould too plainly, if in script retold,
Reveal the life I suffer in suspense.

I heard thee once again ‘thin this day’s grey mist,
As when thou spak’st afore with other goddesses;
And now I tell it to the elm whereon thou leanest,
Clad all in ill, remembrance, and thoughts unblessed.

Were it not for the rain yester shed,
I’d stand amid the flowers, lost in thought,
Feigning myself one poet grave and read,
Who hath some matter worthy to be wrought.

And e’en on crags o’ chill and briny tide
I hide mine eyes away from all the land;
Tho’ those from whom in haste I turn aside
Be guilty but of standing pale and bland.

…And well I love this twilight’s dim estate,
Of grey attire and speech in quiet tone,
And that dull hope, both blunt and reprobate,
Which in the sun the melting snow hath known.

Pearl’d reflections and sea-borne melodies,
From the long hush o’ many a hanging stage,
From the loftiest point o’ me wanderin’ sprees,
Are lost in echoes ’midst dull and wranglin’ rage.

Let us eclipse us with the coming sun,
For they mustn’t our hidden grief discern;
That once again I do have love undone,
That I’ve lost the savour for which I yearn.

To seek each night, when late the hours tick,
Why in thoughts of thee I still myself undo,
As Silvia upon poor Giacomo once did,
As Lesbia upon poor Catullus did too.

’Mid empty shells, mosquitoes’ cries,
And weeds that know not the tide,
I linger ‘neath the savour o’ this brine,
And mutter ‘thin my pleonastic lies.

Thou stay’st but ink, for ever, deare and bare,
And long unwatch’d nightes here beneath the skie,
Where yet the ranke hath not discharg’d his share,
And e’ery day groweth more blewe thereby.

An hour of a billion minutes be told,
In winter of flames and bitter scorne,
In avalanches of dayes in wastage roll’d,
And then the cold, frost, and hell be borne.

Upon the rail of the winding stair,
The mark of a scratch there graven doth lie;
It followeth the heedless footstep’s sound,
A creak that stealeth softly by.

Speak unto me in feigning guise,
For one more hour of vain delight;
For well thou know’st the heavy price
I pay when songs forsake their rite.

’Tis Christmas nigh in every stead this even,
And I behold it from the marble floor;
Then, diligent with gifts that must be given,
The chimera of thy craftly gait ‘thin my lore.

If rain should fall, I were long since slain,
Amid the pools where knowledge lieth spread;
How little thou dost heed the harbour’s chain,
Whereat thy kisses know to cast their stead.

It raineth once more on the grey of a weary Saturday,
’Mid crumbs and paper and candied fruit here spread;
A couch of tedium chores that receiveth my dismay,
And I do ask what profit lies in worshipping life’s thread.

Clouds, sun, and scarves of brine;
Three whole festal days to cast aside;
A smile sustaineth me up the stair’s incline,
Yet steep’d in tedium and in jealous grime.

In the warped rebuildings of a recent past,
Thou art the twisted lines I trace in vain;
In the crooked phrasing that my pen hath cast,
I write thee still from nought and empty strains.

Ne’er so cold the city’s stone,
Nor so keen the ill I harbour still;
O that thou knew’st but half alone
Of half the weight I bear at will.

This year divesteth itself of remorse,
Whilst mirrors name me fool to my face;
Now that I ne’er did feel such force
To stand and weep in mine own place.

Behold, lad, beneath the wonted boughs,
Stript of leaf and redolent of October’s breath,
There resteth the mind ‘pon the waves’ brows;
It floateth ’mid the words of tales beneath.

A little book is this, for its own part,
Of images, of deeds, of imaginings cast,
Of ink-stains and coffee and erring art,
And of dream-born confusions shadowed fast.

Cold is the blast; steep and uneasy
The hip of an outworn hill of old,
Where now that grasping waxeth weary,
Where now the shoulders draw and fold.

Such are we, dry leaves of the field,
Scarce laid upon the waiting ground;
Such are we ’mid those stains revealed,
As a stone within a treasure found.

The sun alone, behold, doth shine,
Even when in quiet course it goeth,
’Mid the sigh that biddeth time,
And at thy “there” in triumph showeth.

Streamed and streaming, thou art a flood,
Of inexorable sloth and raging tide
Of plaining plumes, in drifted mood,
Mine own undoing none may hide.

A Saturday of doings in a Saturday of winds,
Paper-leaves and wastèd plastic stray;
They dance unshapely ’mid the scanty kinds,
And howl at me in confusion; I at them alway.

Irreconcil’d, in Marchen showers the fronds do fall,
For the wonted fools the branches strew the ground;
Inexorable, the drops my brow unclose withal,
’Mid the moist tobacco and Paracetamol ‘round.

Torn from the last shred of linen sheet,
The future thou wouldst have hangs on one decree;
Yet if the heavens begin where earth and sky do meet,
Stretch forth thine arms; lo, we are aloft and free.

A grey downpour beyond the shutter’s frame,
In the howling breath that laboureth sore;
The outskirts in drowsing slumber wane
On the wasted turn of the tightening screw.

I deem it meet: this want of grace and worth in me,
This lack of praise and seemly state
To reach the pedestal where now thou stray’st free,
Bare of foot, in jade and coral clad in thee.

I live. Yet still/unmoving stand,
Tagetes ’mid the violets set;
Crimson in hue, of noble band,
To shun the soles that near ‘em get.

The March grass base as my remorse,
And touch and style I once display’d;
The former deeds in time’s worn course
Lie bare where once my pride was laid.

Ease abideth in the ditch below,
Where a shy vulture droppeth nigh;
It slobbereth down ‘pon my brow
Mock’d, I mock, and yet I live thereby.

Refuse that seemeth emerald green,
A dukedom my narrow cell now seems;
Though the warm pillow lieth between,
I sleep 'pon the selfsame side of me kip.

Thin is the page I smear and line,
And sharp the gaze she lends;
In ordered rows at last I twine,
I hone and whet. The end.