[2025:46] Islands Below the Stream, Massimiliano Nastri

No, no empathy or ascent or liberation;
Only day after day, sea water and rain evaporating,
Leaving dregs of principles refracting
That you are still alive even there, in darkness,
Reduced to a collateral argument, a vanishing memory
You have to swim through, from shore to shore,
Waiting for the high tide, fearful drifting away.
Only—the shores are walls, and love is too much knowledge to bear,
Too much to imagine you dig to a world without hatred,
Where biological fears would be enough to mean something, anything.
In the ocean you cannot reach, limits are humanizing,
Although if they are for good or bad, you wouldn’t know now,
Dissolving or, rather, merging where equality and justice are possible landings,
Stretching your arm to the bliss of being less, the inrush of oblivion calling for you.