Journal of Italian Translation

Adria Bernardi/Raffaello Baldini
if I stumble, I fall down below, and you can still hear the music playing,
this narrow chute, if you crawl on all fours, and here?
where has it belched me out?
this is the organ loft at San Rocco, that’s what’s playing,
two kids, they’re playing around, one of them is
banging on the keyboard, helter-skelter, the other, at the bellows,
has seen me,
it stopped, they keys were playing by themselves,
from below I heard a hissing, a stink of wax,
it had already covered the altars, a few candles
were still lit,
with flames that were flickering,
then it all went out,
but over there, it looks like, maybe, that door,
leads up into the bell tower, I ran to it,
it’s just that these stairs, the wood’s old, they’re creaking,
stop, wait, this one’s giving, this other one’s vibrating too,
it’s nothing, no good, it’s rotten, don’t you see that fissure up there?
and those hanging boards that are swaying,
it’s falling, boom, so now go back the way you came,
slowly, that’s right, it’s angled, the wall’s slanted,
what’s this? I hadn’t seen it at first,
this hatch, it’s open, a passageway, a room,
I held my breath, that’s Father Gaetano,
at the back of the room, in an armchair, his mouth open,
without his dentures, he was snoring, forward I go,
on tiptoes, a step,
the laundry room, hanging sheets,
pillowcases, towels, shirts, tablecloths,
you could get lost here, isn’t that a staircase over there,
a spiral staircase, come on now, carefully,
so you don’t slip, what is this smell? it’s like
carbolic acid, a tincture of some sort, and all these beds,
in a row, white, where have I ended up? the hospital?
and this sawdust on the floor, to keep it dry?
right, keep it dry, can’t you see
there’s already more than an inch? “Sshh! be quiet!”
“But sawdust isn’t going to do any good, “ “Quiet,
because he’s dozed off, just go wherever you need to go,”
“Give it to me straight now, is this a place where I’d be better off
not being?
“And he’s got a strangulated hernia,” “I’ve warned you,
do what you want,” and there, what’s that,
what’s beyond that glass door? I felt around,
another staircase, a beam, two beams, a door,
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