Four Poems
Original version (Italian), by Franca Mancinelli
se mi apri con un gesto
simile alla carezza
che taglia un frutto a metà
trovi in me un’altra me
con le mie stesse pupille, più fonde.
Se apri ancora
sfiorandomi i fianchi esce
un’altra piccola me che sta in me
e continua a nascere
e a far nascere custodie
fino al seme di una voce:
salvami.
*
si sta irradiando da te
questo sole che sorge, bambino
e madre avvolta d’oro
in aureola di paglia e rugiada
dove il fiume di traffico si accende
come candele di fronte a un’icona.
*
davanzali di spine a chi viaggia
nell’aria – per ogni piuma
e paglia che porta nido. Nessuna
panchina lungo il cammino.
Dormire in piedi
e svelti rientrare al recinto.
*
apro le braccia, una linea
di orizzonte. Mi perquisite
cercate la polvere
il punteruolo da viaggio
nel corpo friabile.
Sono libera, e tradita
spaventapasseri in un campo di stoppie.
Translation by John Taylor
if you open me with a gesture
like a caress
slicing a fruit in half,
you will find another me inside me,
eyes with the same pupils, deeper.
If you open more
by lightly touching my hips
another little me inside me
will emerge, keep being born
and giving birth, caring
for the mere seed of a voice:
save me.
*
shining from you
this rising sun, child
and mother wrapped in gold
in a halo of straw and dew
where the river of traffic lights up
like candles in front of an icon.
*
thorny windowsills for travelers
in the air—for every feather
and straw borne by a nest. No
bench along the walk.
Sleep standing up
and quickly return to the paddock.
*
I open my arms, a horizon.
You all search me,
looking for dust,
the portable awl,
on my brittle body.
I’m free, and betrayed,
a scarecrow in stubble.
Franca Mancinelli was born in Fano, Italy, in 1981. Widely considered to be one of the most significant Italian poets, she has been awarded several national prizes. Four of her books have appeared in English in John Taylor’s translations: The Little Book of Passage (2018), At an Hour’s Sleep from Here (2019), The Butterfly Cemetery (2022), and All the Eyes that I Have Opened (2024). Her writing, which regularly appears in English-language poetry journals, is also featured in the University of Oxford project “Non solo muse: panorama della poesia italiana dal 1970 a oggi,” edited by Adele Bardazzi and Roberto Binetti, as well as in Europe in Poems: The Versopolis Anthology, selected and edited by Patrick McGuinness (Arc Publications-Beletrina Academic Press, 2020).
John Taylor is an American writer, critic, and translator who lives in France. Among his many translations of Italian, Modern Greek, and French poetry are books by Philippe Jaccottet, Jacques Dupin, Pierre Chappuis, Pierre-Albert Jourdan, José-Flore Tappy, Charline Lambert, Béatrice Douvre, Pierre Voélin, Georges Perros, Elias Papadimitrakopoulos, Veroniki Dalakoura, Lorenzo Calogero, and Alfredo de Palchi. He is the author of several volumes of short prose and poetry, most recently Remembrance of Water & Twenty-Five Trees (The Bitter Oleander Press), A Notebook of Clouds & A Notebook of Ridges (The Fortnightly Review Press), which is a “double book” co-authored with the Swiss poet Pierre Chappuis, and What Comes from the Night (Coyote Arts Press).