Translated from the Italian by Anna Aresi  

 

 

Springs 

plague spreaders’ gossip

phase 1

we are banned from progress
terminally ill in a civilization
where drones announce spring equinoxes

Olympia’s escape live-streamed at Barbara D’Urso’s
in order to apply healthcare sharia
to liberated touching spaces.

we beg for one hour of yard time
to the sacrament of #IStayHome;
we smuggle looks and dog walks

hypochondriacs from presidential decrees/
immunocompromised
in the defense of life and the weakest

with the social distancing of (r)existences
—in the Wuhan of the lower Po valley
Goliath surrendered to a thousandth of a micron—

we wear our window grates
trying not to inhale bugs;
around the yard
in fifty-four days. 

we push the partisan guerrilla to the end of the year
telling each other that nothing
will ever be the same again.

and yet the seasons sizzle
badgers run fast along via Pietrapiana,
dolphins go hunting around Venezia’s Lido.

bears stretch their legs on the Tonale Pass;
hippos in resorts
on the Indian Ocean beaches.

the world took a few years’ sabbatical;
science reduces us to particulate particles
in the interstitial spasms of modernity. 

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Summers

LOVE EPILEXIA
(Elba Songs)

 III 

In Chiessi, the fish came from the sea in the morning
after the Costa del Sole sunsets,

where one makes love overhanging the Tyrrhenian Sea,
dodging falling rocks from Capanne.

fishing competitions with the cormorants
while the Libeccio crushes their echoes against the rocks

and you understand why one can never see Corsica
from the French shores

—paths that climb up the vines,
smelling of oleander and juniper

among the prickly pears scattered over the terraces
that go up the ruins of San Bartolomeo—

but once you take on the challenge,
it is you, alone, in front of the horizon

from the mountain ridges
even giants fell in love with it
and spend their epochs lost in the abyss

sadness
resting at their side. 

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Falls 

metropolis (urban quarts)

guard rails on all fours
where Borussia Dortmund is a gas station,
just the time for a God Save the Queen
and everything restarts, PC included.

streetlamps like ostriches
crack open our cities’ skulls:
too many useless thoughts
jamming their heads.

rolling shutters have more art than
Palazzo Vecchio’s Wi-FI,
for the modest price of two coffees;
hair is trees in October.

(were there something, or someone, to disown—
would you?) a moonlike many others
and the alley, more than the river,
must not be revealed.

the metropolis looks like it would never end—ever
from when we’ll be happy in December,
but we had more time to drink air
and look at the stars.

…everything restarts, PC included.
on a moon like many others—for the modest price of two coffees;
too many useless thoughts jamming their heads

at the bottom of the glass, a déjà-vu in a bar. 

---

Winters 

December 21

hands of chapped oak trees
toasting the fall sales;
raising the glasses of white seasons,
each will tell their tale.

beech trees scatter to the wind
what little baldness was left on the ground—
it floats over a stream
tall as a bottle
between the banks
of gentrification.

Christmas lights up artificial leaves on fir trees,
turns them off intermittingly on the branches of a clearing;
it’s a supremacist god’s beach-ready rehearsal
in the still-life-academy of vanities—

the willow tree bows to a 12-month Canossa
in the panting solfeggio
of an Anima Mundi.

wait for the snow
to fall on your regrets

and enjoy the cold
like shyness—

February will tell you
if the snow survived.

starlings expand and contract
at the fireworks of the winter solstice

chromatic power, synchronic hunger
—the Sieve river, already full, watches sleepily

(but what are we doing here
in front of its magenta?

the colors of civilization
crumble against it).

much more poetry than in a Freccia tricolore

because of this, the Town has pronounced them illegal,
out of the dream, it then made a myriad of termites
in the blinding darkness of the highway. 

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 Also, read four Bengali poems by Debarati Mitra, translated into English by Nandini Gupta, and published in The Antonym: 

During The Kiss & Other Poems— Debarati Mitra

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