A String of Seasons

A String of Seasons

by Carmine Loru

1st of November 2024.

Not everything came down

That day. The old world had been dying for ages,

The building started to crack when Tito died, junački

Sin, before we were even born. There could not be

A better time to lose everything we had:

Before we even had it. To be born naked.

I still wear that uncertainty in my bed.

It’s so late but this refuge is what I want

For the whole day, listening to the breath

Of a stranger who let me use her body,

Smoking a cigarette while I pile up

My good intentions in a corner of the room.

It’s not the walls of the prison they have built

Around us that are collapsing, it’s our schools,

Our hospitals, the sky is raining down in shards

Of glass on our land. It seems as though they stole

Even our empathy. We no longer have feelings,

They anaesthetized our consciences with our past.

Through the curtains the window lets in

The most abstract shapes of light.

Underneath, on the street, an old man draws

Arabesques on the air with his hands,

Gesticulating with urgency while he talks,

Like a conductor before an orchestra.

You don’t love the things you take for granted.

Innocence, freedom, breathing, your parents -

And with them the feeling of being taken care of,

That if you fall the Earth will catch you -

The calming sound of the ice breaking

Under the shoes on a cold winter day.

He may be preaching that his God is about

To wreak havoc for our sins, but it’s easy now;

After it happened that’s no longer a prophecy.

I can’t see the station from this hole where I hide,

I can’t hear the noises from outside. Nobody is waiting

For me elsewhere. No, my name is not Firić, Komar, Raca.

There are trains that were never boarded,

Kisses that were never given, for a long time

Imagining the end of the world was simpler

Than conceiving the end of this.

We don’t need

Bricks to throw through their windows,

We need more bricks to build our new home.

This is the day I wake up early and go out

On the streets of our town, with my red hands.

When I want to see the culprits, I look at you

Who are a stranger no more,

I look at the oblivious

Danube, I look at myself in the mirror, at all of us -

Mi dižemo čelo, mi kročimo smjelo.

 

Carmine Loru (1981) was born in the city of Alghero, Sardinia. He writes in Sardinian, Italian, Alguerés Catalan, and English. After periods spent in Albania, Serbia, and Spain, he settled in South London in 2010, where he has worked primarily in the music sector. He began writing poetry in 2024. In April 2025, he won the 19th edition of the Antonio Gramsci Literary Prize in Ales, in the category dedicated to poetry in Sardinian language. In May 2026, his complete English translation of the poem Isperdiu e Agatau (Lost and Found) was featured in the “Translation Tuesday” series of the literary journal Asymptote. In June 2026, three of his poems were featured in the magazine L’Altrovein a bilingual Sardinian-Italian version.