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Translated from the Italian by Laura Valeri 

 

Time Dies 

High above the hills, the flaming space
of a dispersed sunset
where a faint topaz moon
inscribes an arc and fades hoary.
Grottos of shadow trees, grey
of the wild glades. And that weary
sound of water at the end of an evening.
You over my heart, you in my eyes,
desperate sweetness. Meanwhile,
our time together dies.

Finale

Wherever you fly, inspired lark,
tender musing,
memory and hope disperse.
Muted every sound, spent every word,
the rush of life seems dormant.
Only that sky exists, and the lone
pitch of your voice;
your soaring song. 

Once under an infernal sky
broken ablaze by the fires of war,
I saw the petals of a white rose
unfold with love.
Through the rumbles that gutted the night
I heard the soft purl of a stream
flow through the grass and the stones. In the horror
of death, the only living, that sound
of water, that flower.

Also, read a Hindi fiction by Chitra Mudgal, translated into English by Rituparna Mukherjee, and published in The Antonym: 

Monster— Chitra Mudgal

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About Author

Diego Valeri (1887-1976) was an Italian poet, journalist, writer, critical scholar, and literary translator of French and German literature. During his life, he published 21 books of poetry (one post-humorously), five collections of travel essays, including the best-selling A Sentimental Guide to Venice, and Venetian Fantasies, various books of criticism, and literary translations from the German and French, including Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, Stendhal’s The Red and The Black, poems by Goethe, and essays by LaFontaine. Diego Valeri is fondly remembered as ‘the poet of Venice’ for his love and dedication to the city in which he lived for almost all his life and that featured dominantly in his writing. The Diego Valeri Prize in Poetry is to this day a prestigious award in Italy, dedicated to the poet’s memory.

About Translator

Laura Valeri is a literary translator and an award-winning author of three collections of short fiction and one collection of memoirs. Her translations and original writing appear most recently in Hunger Mountain, The Account, Griffell, Litro, The Antonym, The Bangalore Review, and (mac)ro(mic). Laura Valeri has an MFA in Fiction from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and an MFA in Creative Writing from Florida International University. She is the founding editor of Wraparound South, a literary journal, and she teaches in the undergraduate program at Georgia Southern University. She lives in Savannah, GA.

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