Journal of Italian Translation

Gregory Pell/Davide Rondoni
New York
Central Park, autumn’s end, trees
of electric silk and blood hues
in the sky’s cold blue that rise up
proffer themselves
then slowly they relent,
in its becoming, air
as it dims.
I.
shadow
And it starts, the frosty crown
of the skyscrapers,
to glisten on the more somber throng in the streets.
I ask Oonagh: why do you keep your hair like that,
grey at thirty.
But dancing she moves her head’s cinders
and those inconceivable azure eyes
she forms a magic circle
in Manhattan, she sets herself ablaze
and opens arms, oars, wings
into the ocean that is the evening’s voices.
You hear the shouts from invisible boats.
In the dark bay.
What is it that happens in this poem?
it happens
that I see you open
the refrigerator and in that flash
on your face suddenly luminous fans, time
II.
and I see you a bit tipsy
and wonderfully desperate
cast from the balconies of the house
where your little girls sleep
your cry that emanates in the fog:
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