Damasa is the name I’d like to give my daughter.
I’m almost forty now.
Perhaps it’s the name I should give her.
…
Anna Maria Ortese used to say the television
aerials on the roofs she saw
from her window
looked like ships’ masts.
That’s why she had the idea she’d never left Naples.
…
There was a song by someone I don’t remember
It talks of Piero Ciampi.
“Damned Friends” I think it’s called.
“For you I even lost a wife”, it says.
…
I’ve had friends,
but few are left.
At times I make new friendships.
It’s something I still believe in.
…
One day a friend said to me
that Austria would lose its finest poet
during a bank holiday.
He committed suicide on New Year’s Day, 1994.
…

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