Long time Fes resident artist and writer Alessandro Ferrando is publishing a book with much of its material composed in our delightful little city, famous for having inspired many other authors including superstar Paul Bowles and Sandy Mccutcheon.
De Cama en Cama: 32 Poemas de Amor y 5 Cuentos Urbanos (Tranquilo Books, 2015), means literally, "From Bed to Bed: 32 Love Poems and 5 Urban Tales; for now is just available in spanish, his mother tongue, but he promises that he's already working on an english translation. We asked him about the title, and it's not exactly what we were thinking. Alessandro kindly answered our question: "It's not about sex, not at all, From Bed to Bed wants to be the kind of story that goes around from mouth to mouth, that enters the popular imaginary, a bit like the childhood tales that our parents told us when we were little...only that this one is mainly for adults". His voice is dark and sultry, with tragic hints and impossible romances, with complex characters that we are forced to hate: the prostitute, the criminal, the thief, the serial lover, but for some reason we end up ,if not loving, at least understanding that, like many of us, they simply could not escape their own fate.
As a gift he agreed to translate one of the poems just for us:
You Have Been Drinking
You've been drinking all night that kind of Japanese liquor that you like
Recalling words as warm as the fire that moves on your left
And that more than once hurt you …
Your smile seemed indelible , however, now that no longer exists
one can still read between the cracks of your lips
the words "youth" and "arrogance" that accompanied you for so many years
and that you printed on the mouth of each of your lovers
perhaps unaware that it was your own being which diluted in their saliva.
You have been drinking the whole night
and now you hum softly that melody that enchanted all your lovers when they listened to it under the sheets
And it sounds like the grand anthem of a long-gone country.
You've been drinking all night
leaving your glass on top of that book of Cavafy whose beauty someone taught you
And which you said not so long ago that it would be the basis of your life...
You've been drinking all night
Since you wanted to become self-sufficient;
I see from afar how you can't get up from the chair
I thought a thousand times in coming closer and tell you something
and now I believe that it should take you home and make you lie down ...
But I know that there is a special glow in your eyes that I cannot see
and that would force me to stay next to the body I once loved.
http://books.google.co.ma/books/about?id=9eFGBgAAQBAJ&redir_esc=y
https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=9eFGBgAAQBAJ
