{"id":2888,"date":"2017-10-25T11:54:57","date_gmt":"2017-10-25T10:54:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/cuidar\/?p=2888"},"modified":"2017-10-25T13:11:29","modified_gmt":"2017-10-25T12:11:29","slug":"amatrice-a-poem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/cuidar\/2017\/10\/25\/amatrice-a-poem\/","title":{"rendered":"Amatrice – a poem"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Graham Mort<\/a>, visited Amatrice in September 2016, five weeks after the major earthquake.<\/p>\n

We approached Amatrice through wooded hillsides, mountains in the distance, white clouds, the road twisting and climbing through tight bends. At first, all seemed peaceful, until an eerie sense of desertion set in. The fields were empty of workers and livestock. Then houses that looked perfectly sound showed vertical cracks in their structure. We passed the first demolished houses on the outskirts of the village, a crane at work, plaster dust choking the air as we followed a track built from the hardcore of fallen buildings. We were greeted by volunteer aid workers, clearly traumatised from their nightmare of pulling survivors from their homes. We met children in the improvised school, saw the work Save the Children was doing to give them some continuity, glimpsed the fallen church and ruined high street, cordoned off where so many people had died. The sense of human solidarity was both palpable and moving. What struck me when making the visit and in writing the poem afterwards was the sense of the cataclysmic cancellation of people\u2019s futures, the immense effort to re-engage, the formation of an imaginative capacity that, from now on, would have to take account of such events.\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Translation provided by CUIDAR partners Anna Grisi and Flaminia Cordani
\nof Save the Children Italy.<\/p>\n

Photos\u00a0\u00a9 Graham Mort<\/p>\n

Amatrice<\/strong><\/p>\n

The sound of dust sifting to dust; an almost<\/em>
\nsilence, almost touchable. We took<\/em><\/p>\n

the new track built from rubble \u2013 the old hair-<\/em>
\npin road collapsing into woods \u2013<\/em><\/p>\n

through a mist of talc where they were pulling<\/em>
\ndown a house; past police cars, aid<\/em><\/p>\n

trucks, houses cracked open in spoiled clutches<\/em>
\nand hens running wild under our
\n<\/em>\"\"
\ntyres, over the whisper of fallen chestnut leaves.<\/em>
\nThe mountains were the same, we<\/em><\/p>\n

guessed: clouds puffing out their slow white<\/em>
\nsmoke above a village of tents, a<\/em><\/p>\n

new school timbered by joiners from the north.<\/em>
\nThe main street tilted in my lens, the<\/em><\/p>\n

church steeple that killed a family in their beds,<\/em>
\nthe old school fallen from itself into a<\/em><\/p>\n

kind of ignorance. Workers who’d pulled the dead<\/em>
\nfrom sleep joined our photograph:<\/em><\/p>\n

volunteers, their eyes hard to bear. They took<\/em>
\nour hands, didn’t want to let us leave<\/em><\/p>\n

just then, as if we were a lost future’s children<\/em>
\n\"\"straying home. Amatrice, they said,<\/em><\/p>\n

bearing witness, their blue jackets torn at the<\/em>
\nsleeves. Amatrice: its leaves shivering,<\/em><\/p>\n

their palms unreadable, lying still in ours.<\/em><\/p>\n

Amatrice<\/strong><\/p>\n

Il suono della polvere ritorna polvere; un <\/em>
\n silenzio che e\u2019 quasi possibile toccare. Abbiamo preso<\/em><\/p>\n

il nuovo sentiero costruito tra le macerie \u2013<\/em>
\n\"\"<\/a>la vecchia strada collassa nei boschi \u2013<\/em><\/p>\n

attraverso una foschia di talco dove stavano abbattendo una casa;<\/em>
\npassano macchine della polizia, camion
\n<\/em>con gli aiuti, case squarciate<\/em>
\n e le galline che corrono sotto i nostri<\/em><\/p>\n

pneumatici, oltre il sussurro delle foglie di castagne cadute.<\/em>
\n Le montagne erano le stesse, abbiamo<\/em><\/p>\n

immaginato: nuvole che soffiano il loro lento bianco<\/em>
\n fumo sopra un villaggio di tende, la<\/em><\/p>\n

nuova scuola forgiata dai falegnami del nord.<\/em>
\n La strada principale inclinata nella mia lente, il<\/em><\/p>\n

campanile della chiesa che uccise una famiglia nei loro letti,<\/em>
\n la vecchia scuola caduta su se stessa in una
\n\"\"<\/a>
\n<\/em>specie di ignoranza. Lavoratori che avevano tirato fuori i morti<\/em>
\n dai letti si uniscono alla nostra fotografia:<\/em><\/p>\n

i volontari, i loro occhi difficili da sopportare. Loro hanno preso<\/em>
\n le nostre mani, e non volevano lasciarci andare<\/em><\/p>\n

proprio allora, mentre andavamo a casa,<\/em>
\ncome se fossimo i figli di un futuro perso. Amatrice, hanno detto<\/em><\/p>\n

ne e\u2019 testimone, le loro giacche azzurre strappate nelle<\/em>
\n maniche. Amatrice: le sue foglie tremano,<\/em><\/p>\n

i loro palmi inossidabili, si stringono ancora ai nostri.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Graham Mort, from \u2018Black Shiver Moss\u2019, Seren, 2017.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Graham Mort, visited Amatrice in September 2016, five weeks after the major earthquake. We approached Amatrice through wooded hillsides, mountains in the distance, white clouds, the road twisting and climbing through tight bends. At first, all seemed peaceful, until an eerie sense of desertion set in. The fields were empty of workers and livestock. Then[…]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":3006,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Amatrice - a poem","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2888","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/cuidar\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/36-cropped.jpg?fit=2193%2C2185&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p70rsT-KA","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/cuidar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2888","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/cuidar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/cuidar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/cuidar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/cuidar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2888"}],"version-history":[{"count":109,"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/cuidar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2888\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3019,"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/cuidar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2888\/revisions\/3019"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/cuidar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3006"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/cuidar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2888"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/cuidar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2888"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/cuidar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2888"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}