Journal of Italian Translation

Adria Bernardi/Raffaello Baldini
I am the Lord, wherever I am is war,
I can do anything, make rivers overflow, earthquakes,
still in the dream, I get afraid,
I wake up wide awake, I walk to the window,
lights out there, people, on that highway,
they never stop, and I’m here facing the window,
bare feet, in my underwear,
and I pray, I find a saint on the calendar,
I don’t want to say his name, but he’s one I’ve never heard talked about,
I’m sure I’m the only one who knows that one,
Jolanda’s complaining, “It’s four in the morning,
What are you doing?” and I don’t ask him for anything,
I don’t want any grace, it’s enough
that he’ll do whatever he can, but it doesn’t matter,
even if he can’t do anything, I know that he’s there,
that I pray and that he hears me.
Water
I, it was my buddies, you go, you go,
for laughs, and I walked up, there were six or seven of us,
he’d set up chairs, and seeing him
up close, he was slight, with this shabby jacket,
and, man, was he was frenetic,
jabbering away, in five minutes
I was already dazed, he talked a mile a minute,
there I was, head hanging down,
where have I ended up? he picked Mirko first:
“Observe all the butterflies! here is the net, now catch them!”
and Mirko, intent, with that butterfly net, is running, he’s leaping up,
as if there were moths, then he stopped him,
he was pointing like a bloodhound, people were saying: “Come on,
it’s right there,” he, flick, swoosh, and that guy: “You have caught it,”
he slapped him on the back: “Congratulations!”
next he picked Dato and Carlín di Faiòun,
he positioned them in front of him: “Brrr, it’s freezing!”
they started to shiver, they were stomping their feet,
they blew into their hands, “And this snow
is wicked!” they turned up their collars,
both of them standing, they opened an umbrella, Dato
pointed it down low into the wind,
Carlín right there behind him, hunched over, his cap jammed
down to his ears, and I sat there,
with my arms crossed, what is this garbage?
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