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An astonishing trajectory through love and loss, rendered with utter honesty and vulnerability: DAWN RAVENS
is published by Lapwing Publications (2022).
To order Mario's book, go straight to the Lapwing page by clicking the logo below:
or e-mail Mario at mmpetrucci@hotmail.com
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A technical and emotive tour de force, as close as one can get to the final word on love lost.
* * * AUDIO: two clips from Dawn Ravens (... click here) * * * (not for redistribution)
Again
Again this night
your body leaves me
for sleep: for your own
separate deepness. Light
here is sightless, makes
of our chamber
this saintly grotto – so
faint its gain, its
kiss pure
yet almost non-existent
at your sleeve. Your
soul, sightless
of me: unknown
to you it
turns
turns
to say: You and I
shall burn together, burn
apart until this earth dissolves.
Now I pray to darkness,
to my heart
unbirthed so bloodless within its
ribbed trunk, wordless,
murmuring
as though all human blood in its
rigour had been drunk.
And through this
dimness
is God mere emptying,
unfocussing space – or out in
the street on elegant feet that
holy figure agleam: slow
-moving
saffron to your pale
dreaming crocus
of a face?
(c) Mario Petrucci 2019
Dawn Ravens is a fascinating hybrid beast, part Rumi, part Saadi, part Petrucci. It is also a challenging - because unstable - text, a remarkable blend
of ancient and modern, where traditional diction is played off against an excoriating contemporary loss. These are powerful cries of pain. Petrucci's inventiveness with form,
and the intensity with which he drives the pathos, are real achievements. Martyn Crucefix
Reviews of Dawn Ravens...
"Mario Petrucci, the translator previously of poems by Hafez (‘Beloved’), has become one of our foremost poets evoking both the transcendence and immanence of love in all its forms."
'Fresh Directions' - STRIDE magazine, posted online 10 Aug. 2022
[read full review here... HERE]
“A remarkable blend of the modern and the timeless… a masterful collection bringing new shine to classics dulled by the dust of many centuries.”
Acumen 107 (Andrew Geary; September 2023)
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