Mariangela Gualtieri
trans. by Olivia e. Sears
THREE POEMS
Three Untitled Poems
My hand is happy here.
Idleness fills it
with vegetal peace. I am like one
in waiting. I am an animal
lazing, resting in its skin
a fruit hanging from the branch
in its ripening.
I am a fistful of gravel
on the road. Dry brushwood
in an indifferent waiting of waters.
And so peaceful and whole
still unscathed by life
all pretense put aside, feeling no pain today
I wear my pink hue
like a flag
nothing but a staying still
in waiting. Nothing but this
here and now.
—
Soon my hand will become a little
white branch among roots. Soon we will
be gone.
—
For all the ribs battered and broken.
For every animal hurled from its nest
its mechanism for love shattered.
For all the thirst left unquenched
until lips crack until collapse
until the glaring failure. For my brothers
in their dens. And my sisters
in traps and in their webs and in
the flames erupting and in their huts
and bound and abused. For the children
torn from me. And the pearls in the sea
bed. For the winter I adore
and for the girl’s scream,
her vain attempt to flee.
For this, knowing and loving all this,
I am here. To fathom and embrace all this
I am here. To float along with everything
perhaps to fall I am here
so that every swallowed seed
will flower in me
until the fruit astonishes I swear it.
Let all suffering
be duly sung
so the lightness of certain
hours, of certain delicate hands, all
will be viewed with wonder
every wave of sound heard, every
song every sob will penetrate the veins
I swear now everything is
suffused with stars and space.
Even in this ugly city the glowing
specter of joy shines bright
above the noisiest taverns.
This I swear.
Mariangela Gualtieri is an Italian poet and dramaturge of the famed Teatro Valdoca, which she co-founded with Cesare Ronconi in 1983. She has published more than a dozen books of poetry and theatrical works. The poems translated here appeared in her volume Bestia di gioia (Einaudi, 2010).
Olivia E. Sears is a translator and founder of the Center for the Art of Translation and serves on the editorial board of Two Lines Press. Her translation of Ardengo Soffici’s groundbreaking 1919 poetry volume BÏF§ZF+18: Simultaneities and Lyric Chemisms is forthcoming from World Poetry Books (Fall 2019).