Fabio Pusterla

TRANS. BY WILL SCHUTT

Flower, Cliff

It must have been a morning, just one: something
like an unexpected, radiant light
behind or below the clouds, a stretch of pink
fixed before your (maybe hard, somber) day ahead.

The audacity of looking. That’s what was revealed to you.

And after: to be true to or betray that potential light.
Little more than that.
Reckon up, breathe, or look
away from what hurts, summons and scrutinizes you.

Your pinch of fireflies, your pinch of ashes.

Weigh them. Flower and cliff.

Fabio Pusterla was born in Mendrisio, Switzerland, in 1957. He is the award-winning author of eight collections of poetry. His most recent, Cenere, o Terra (Ashes, or Earth), was published by Marcos y Marcos in 2018. An active translator and essayist, he lives and works between Lombardy and Lugano, where he teaches Italian language and literature.

Will Schutt is the author of Westerly (Yale, 2013) and translator, most recently, of My Life, I Lapped It Up: Selected Poems of Edoardo Sanguineti (Oberlin, 2018). His translation of Fabio Pusterla’s selected poems, Brief Homage to Pluto and Other Poems, is forthcoming from Princeton University Press.