Journal of Italian Translation - Brooklyn College - Academic Home ...

Santos/Riccardi
with sticks and voices they beat the banks
of clear water bursting
under the blows among ferns and wild
grass in the rusty heaps of metal scraps.
5.
Hunting a matter of time.
Some say: it the devil it a curse they will come to bless
the mud, the swamp
the furnaces of Unione and the whole city.
The beast is a black snake
with white rings striping its back
like swaddling cloths.
Have to find it first...
Beasts born underground in the cracks
of summer among the juniper roots
know other forms of animal life
and the last days of the world.
6.
Dressed in flesh
he claimed himself trustworthy
for the sake of his suffering
and someone suggested
his fear of dying
was merely staged
in the olive grove.
Voice slightly veiled, however...
7.
Some say: back home I knew someone
five feet tall who sang...
you heard him sing in the quarry
way down at the bottom of a cave
and he sang for love they said
the way dragons sing out on the plains
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