Journal of Italian Translation

Michael Palma/Giovanni Raboni
this is the way that babies are made—this
everybody knows—but sometimes it happens they’re
unmade. With
love, do you see? (not to me: you’re looking to get
mixed up all by yourself),
with love, not with indifference, irritation,
not with the wish to make him go away.
A little boy (reading) dead of exhaustion
in French Switzerland, or maybe I misremember, in
Piedmont—in the vicinity
(not in the shadow, absolutely) of
a thicket
or else, to get right down to it, of a rock,
this is what I wanted to say: that his grownup mother
in having hidden the animal from him (and he, in
tracking it down, going round
midnight upon midnight, going round like a lunatic, in
the end
dead of exhaustion or overheated or frozen, in the end
it was impossible to tell)
didn’t think that she was doing any harm.
Call him while he’s sleeping
and he only flicks an ear.
He suckles in his dreams
at his dead mamma’s breast.
4
Little Person
He gnaws biscuits. He adores
the taste of coffee grounds.
He savors with his paws
shawls and thick pullovers.
He sleeps on leaves. He uses
a book for a head cushion.
195