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

I desperately looked for you, wanting you
with me in my fight against endings.
I too became a queen that day
in my heroic stance,
as I gazed at what humbles most.
In honor of light, I stared at death.
Diana Festa 47
Needy
Unprovoked, questions come up, will I, will you?
Tell me, will you take a long walk with me
across the wood, hold my hand
not to stumble on dead trunks,
will you push the branches to the side
for me to pass?
In Central Park, my foot bled,
the shoe a vise, I did not tell you.
I want you to know, at Arles by the haystacks,
I felt Van Gogh’s desperate loneliness,
the unmerciful sky. The depth of his yellows,
the startled eyes in sunflowers nudged
my unresisting sinews, heat burned my scalp.
And did you see the window in Piazza Farnese
looking down?
It condemned me to microscopic indignities,
to remove the smudge from my white shirt.
I expected you to know the things
I may have imagined, I
peddler of recognition in the art of dissembling
insufficiency.
You gave me a lot, I am grateful,
I wanted more,
how to banish the image of a shut door
in the juxtaposition of fear and desire.