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Poems by Maria Luisa Spaziani Translated by Vincent Frontero


Tender Acts 

 

I

 

I’d like to feel your cool hand 

against my burning forehead. Like this the dew 

falls on exhausted rose bushes.  

Like this the moon blossoms in the dark. 

 

Help me to love you, to invent you 

in your absences. My fantasy 

however, is one of your gifts, a clear alibi

in this world of one location. 

 

II

 

Clover of Treviglio, my pillow 

for the sweetest dreams. If life 

deals me pain (it happens every so often)

I know where to rest my cheek.

 

That name is enough to crumble the wings

and backdrop of a pale experience. 

Beauty, joy, and youth burst in 

spilling out every dam. 

 

 

Tenerezze 

 

I

 

Vorrei sentire la tua mano fresca 

sulla fronte che brucia. Così scende 

sopra i roseti esausti la rugiada. 

Così sboccia la luna nel buio. 

 

Aiutami ad amarti, ad inventarti 

nelle tue assenze. La mia fantasia 

è comunque un tuo dono, un chiaro alibi 

in questo mondo senza altrove. 

 

II

 

Trifoglio di Treviglio, il mio cuscino

per i sogni più belli. Se la vita 

mi assesta colpi (capita ogni tanto), 

io so dove poggiare la mia guancia. 

 

Basta quel nome e crollano le quinte 

e i fondali di un pallido vissuto. 

Bellezza, gioia, e giovinezza irrompono 

rovesciando ogni diga. 

 

 

 


Vegetable Patches and Gardens

 

I

 

The Venus maidenhair is a sacred seedling, 

the word alone says so, and sweetly the wind 

unravels her goddess foliage 

born among the rubble at early light. 

 

Goats don’t graze on it, 

nor are they certain why. One day I plucked 

a frail branch to keep as a bookmark. 

It never managed to grow old. 

 

 

Orti e Giardini

 

I

 

È una piantina sacra il capelvenere, 

lo dice la parola, e dolcemente 

scioglie il vento le chiome della dea

nate fra le macerie al primo sole. 

 

Le capre non lo brucano e non sanno 

certo il perché. Ne colsi un giorno un esile 

rametto per tenerlo a segnalibro 

non riesce a incanutire. 

 

 

 


Roma

 

III

 

Whoever went to watch a race at the Colosseum

would spit out almonds and peach seeds. 

After two thousand years, they were found 

by overzealous archeologists. 

 

And they planted them. A decent experiment. 

Now a tiny almond tree has been born. 

They invite us to admire it. We envy it. 

Why not bury us at the Colosseum? 

 

 

 

Roma 

 

III

 

Chi assisteva a una corsa al Colosseo 

sputò semi di mandorle e di pesche. 

Dopo duemila anni, li ritrovano 

i solerti archeologi. 

 

E li hanno piantati. Un bell’esperimento. 

Ora è nato un minuscolo mandorlo. 

Ci invitano a ammirarlo. Lo invidiamo. 

Perché non seppellirci al Colosseo?

 

 

 


Games With Time

 

II

 

I listen to time pass hour by hour. 

Progressive maturation, or instead 

cosmic abacus tallying 

the hours lived and those still on credit. 

 

Every single hour emits a sound 

that an incredibly attentive ear deciphers: 

carillon, andantino, wedding aria, 

dissonance, allegretto, gallop, requiem. 

 

 

 

Giochi Col Tempo 

 

II

 

Sento che il tempo passa ora di ora. 

Maturazione progressiva, oppure 

pallottoliere cosmico che segna 

le ore vissute e quelle ancora in credito. 

 

Ogni singola ora emette un suono

che un orecchio attentissimo decifra: 

carillon, andantino, aria nuziale, 

dissonanze, allegretto, galop, requiem. 

 

 

 

 


Vincent Frontero (He/Him) is a poet, teacher, and translator originally from Spring Lake, NJ. He is currently an Instructor of English at the University of South Carolina Sumter. He has been awarded an MFA in Creative Writing from West Virginia University. 

Maria Luisa Spaziani (1922-2014) was an Italian poet, essayist, novelist, playwright, translator, and academic. Although largely rejecting the neoavanguardia, an Italian avant-garde literary movement popular during the 1960s, Spaziani would go on to be highly regarded amongst her peers and critics both in Italy and on the international scene. Such writers and artists included Virginia Woolf, Ezra Pound, Ingeborg Bachmann, Jorge Luis Borges, and Pablo Picasso. Starting in 1954 Maria Luisa Spaziani published nineteen full-length collections of poetry along with several books of fiction and nonfiction prose. She was nominated three times for the Nobel Prize in Literature.


The original poems are © Mondadori Libri SpA, Milano.


11 November 2021



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