Three Poems by Andrea De Alberti

Jun 18, 2026 | Italian, Poetry

Translated from the Italian by Jessica Harkins

Sapiens Sapiens

They never bought you the motor scooter
because you did your homework stretched out on the ground,
you refused the excessive work,
the control of the bicycle handlebars. You would have liked to let off steam at the Leopardi Stadium.
This photo does not give confidence
you will improve your underdeveloped mental areas. See, you hold the shovel by the wrong end,
as though to dig up clouds of potatoes.

 

Originally

It will be like the body’s slowing in a new satisfaction
in the dim light of snow, walking towards another doubling:
plane trees, lime trees, acacias, lives as a couple for thirty years behind the front gates to the house, what we will be, or what we will become, maybe I was, maybe you were first to be born,
a departure and a return, an arrival in silence. It will be a new growing, a kind of annulment,
an empty simulation,
to feel full of things
inside a room at the base
of our living in silence, with the mechanical emptiness of an action,
whenever you distance yourself from him as from a point of light
you can no longer find him, not even in dreams.

 

Photo by Alexander Krivitskiy on Unsplash

Inside

Every day I read Inside
written in pencil over the ottoman
but I didn’t tell you about it, a month passed
and in the light of the house the words seemed
clearer, more and more imaginable
in a body, a movement as if, in there, from room to room we already heard on bare feet
our son yelling run it, always run
this risk and it was enough for us to sleep next to him.

Andrea De Alberti

Andrea De Alberti

Andrea De Alberti was born in 1974 in Pavia, Italy. His poems appear in the Eighth Italian Book of Contemporary Poetry edited by Franco Buffoni; in New Italian poets, edited by Paolo Zublena; and in Excavation works. Anthology of poets born in the seventies, edited by Giuliano Ladolfi. His books include Solo buone notizie (Interlinea, 2007), with a preface by Angelo Stella; Basta che io non ci sia, (Manni, 2010) with a preface by Cesare Segre; Dall’interno della specie (Einuadi, 2017); and La cospirazione dei tarli: L’universo di don Chisciotte, (Interlinea 2019). He was awarded the Premio Tirinnanzi in 2019. His most recent collection of poetry, Rimozione del conflitto, appeared from Industria e Letteratura (February 2024) to widespread critical acclaim.

 

Jessica Harkins

Jessica Harkins

Jessica Harkins’ translations include two selections of Andrea De Alberti’s uncollected poems, published under the titles Between Destiny and Guilt, Five Poems by De Alberti ( layOut magazine), and La rimozione del conflitto (Versodove); poems by Rossano Pestarino in Exchanges Literary Review; several sonnets by Gaspara Stampa in SALT Magazine, ARS Interpres and Agenda; and Ridammi il sole (Persephone Books, 2021), a short memoir by Venetian writer Carla Gagliardi. Her first book of poems, The Paled Guest, was published by Kelsay Books, and first bilingual chapbook, Jukebox, appeared

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