A current like a noise machine through sleep. Blue lichen fields. Mossed boulders. Waking up to ice cubes cracking in a plastic cup

and voices (“awesome for the Hong Kong branch

. . . well, most of all we miss our daughter . . . ”) I still

see it: the climb up slate as runnels spill

from some bare misted summit like a source.

Whatever sense this dream might make

to others. And whatever when they wake

they also have been dreaming. Rivers of faces

down hallways, merging, as desires mesh

and fissure. Cash for clothes or arms or flesh.

And if there is no towering sublime

where all comes clear to all, no final climb

through cloud, like some old Bible illustration:

how could that ever stop the current flowing

out of the glass at jfk: skin glowing

plumb and peach as we walk inside the sun.

…………

Sognando Groenlandia

Un flutto simile a rottore rumoroso nel sonno.
Campi di licheni blu. Massi muschiosi. Svegliandomi
a cubetti di ghiaccio che si sfaldano in un bicchiere di plastica

e voci (“eccellente per la filiale di Hong Kong
. . . bene, ci manca più di tutto nostra figlia . . . “) Ancora
la rivedo: la salita in ardesia mentre i ruscelli esondavano

da qualche nuda cima nebbiosa come una sorgente.
Qualunque sia il senso di questo sogno
per gli altri. E di qualsiasi cosa al risveglio

anche loro stessero sognando. Fiumi di facce
lungo i corridoi, che si confondono, come desideri in trappola
nelle fenditure. Contanti per abiti o braccia o carne.

E  se non vi è torreggiante sublime
dove tutto diventa chiaro a tutti, nessuna ultima salita
al cielo, come nelle vecchie illustrazioni bibliche,

come potrebbe ciò mai fermare il flusso che cola
dal bicchiere al jfk: pelle luminosa
prugna e pesca mentre muoviamo verso il sole.

Liberamente tradotta da Rina Brundu, in Dublino, 07/02/2015

To  be published also in www.rinabrunducritique.com

A Translator’s Note: Dear Peter, should you ever stop by just to let you know that I was surfing the Internet and have come across this poem of  yours which I have then decided to translate into Italian. I find it extraordinary with marvellous touches of the poetic art of James Joyce and T.S. Eliot (as well as Patrick White’s), very modernistic and as such very digital age..  For any questions you can write to redazione.rosebud@yahoo.com.

A Biographic Note.

Peter Campion received his BA Peter Campion received his BA from Dartmouth College and his MA from Boston University. His collections of poetry include Other People (2005) and The Lions: Poems (2009). He has also written monographs and catalog essays for the painters Joseph McNamara, Terry St. John, Mitchell Johnson, and Eric Aho. He regularly publishes literary and art criticism in numerous journals and has won a Pushcart Prize.

Equally comfortable in formal and free verse, Campion writes poems that deftly bridge intimate and social concerns. Campion’s former professor, the poet Robert Pinsky, notes in an AGNI review of Other People that the “closeness of the uncanny to the quotidian is Peter Campion’s kind of material.” David Biespiel, reviewing The Lions in the Oregonian, observes, “Campion is a poet who knows that what a poet sees is nothing without a mixture of formal prowess and emotional insight.”

Campion has held a George Starbuck Lectureship at Boston University and a Wallace Stegner Fellowship and Jones Lectureship at Stanford University. He has also taught at Washington College, Ashland University, and Auburn University. Campion is editor of Literary Imagination, the journal of the Association of Literary Scholars and Critics (ALSC).from Dartmouth College and his MA from Boston University. His collections of poetry include Other People (2005) and The Lions: Poems (2009). He has also written monographs and catalog essays for the painters Joseph McNamara, Terry St. John, Mitchell Johnson, and Eric Aho. He regularly publishes literary and art criticism in numerous journals and has won a Pushcart Prize.

Equally comfortable in formal and free verse, Campion writes poems that deftly bridge intimate and social concerns. Campion’s former professor, the poet Robert Pinsky, notes in an AGNI review of Other People that the “closeness of the uncanny to the quotidian is Peter Campion’s kind of material.” David Biespiel, reviewing The Lions in the Oregonian, observes, “Campion is a poet who knows that what a poet sees is nothing without a mixture of formal prowess and emotional insight.”

Campion has held a George Starbuck Lectureship at Boston University and a Wallace Stegner Fellowship and Jones Lectureship at Stanford University. He has also taught at Washington College, Ashland University, and Auburn University. Campion is editor of Literary Imagination, the journal of the Association of Literary Scholars and Critics (ALSC). (Source http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/peter-campion)

Featured image, Southern Greenland scenery, near Nanortalik, where fjords and mountains dominate the landscape, source Wikipedia in English, thanks to the author.