Versi Vegetali is a stage of our eight-year lasting journey as literary magazine Mosse di Seppia. It is a poetic anthology, on which fifteen of our editors and poets have worked. The titles of the collection recalls our vocation as a paper magazine and the playful and spontaneous approach of the poetic gesture. La memoria vegetale is a text of bibliography writings by Umberto Eco, to which this poetic anthology is inspired. In exactly the same mood as today, we chose in 2013 the name Mosse di Seppia for our magazine, a name that traces Ossi di Seppia, Eugenio Montale's masterpiece. The publisher Homo Scrivens who published Versi Vegetali is particularly significant for our work as he shares with us some founding values of literary activity, our very homeland (Naples) and the commitment of non-paid publishing.
Verses by: Lucia Abbatiello, Emanuele Arciprete, Emanuele Battiniello, Francesca Calloni, Francesco Paolo Colucci, Annalisa Davide, Damiana De Gennaro, Alessandro Di Porzio, Maria Neve Iervolino, Marzia Imparato, Axel Perugino, Achille Pignatelli, Pasquale Sbrizzi, Luca Tammaro, Maria Chiara Tortora.
Edited by: Annalisa Davide                Translation by: Yasmin Tailakh

I am but this.
A land – dried and
motionless
since the time of the drum
and the brackish under the sea.
I am but clay,
abandoned stone
in the shape of a caryatid
slowly waiting fora deceased civilization.
Another world between the old and
the ancient, the scrub and the desert.
I am but this.
To hurt me you tried with your tongue
to follow my steps until you met
in the depths of posidonia and coral
a music that is yours
of foreigner memories
over which you have no power.
I am but this,
a sung and abused fantasy
stripped and veiled by a thousand gods.
Mediterraneo, Maria Neve Iervolino

 

Cover me with anemones and vanity
For every time that in your eyes
I thought I found the reflection
of the yellow of the sun and the white of me.
In the dense garden of the little that we are
I will borrow at least
Our best moments
Learning greatness
or the virtue of abandon.
La penitenza, Marzia Imparato

 

Between rocks and steep cliffs
expanses of stones where
the step crumples
takes the shape of trace
and there it stays
for ever.
Lasciare il segno, Achille Pignatelli

 

As white sleet
that melts in the mild dawn
of a new spring-time,
you told me about warmth
in the language of winter.
Nevischio, Pasquale Sbrizzi

 

a caress
and flowers fall
intoxicating the air
in a sweet whirl.
We laughed under hailstorm and bolts
eyes like wasps
flashing in the glows.
Lush expanses of weeds.
The gray euphoria approached.
And it cleared.
Leaves, edged and round
bounced lights
from a stem to another.
D’Aprile, Axel Perugino