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

Fortini/Ferrarelli 63
Write I tell myself, hate
those who with gentleness guide toward nothingness
the men and the women who walk with you
and think they don’t know. Among the names
of your enemies write your own. The storm
disappeared with emphasis. Nature
is too weak to imitate battles. Poetry
changes nothing. Nothing is sure, but keep on writing.
The Poem / Poetry of the Roses
1.
Roses, roses of dust, such hardness
in the stumps at night, roses arched
with thorns like the sturdy tendons
and the dried up muscles of the girl
who in the car maneuvers silk and leather
yielding if a high beam hits her and stained
along the throat like a bruised rose
in the intense midnight work, the nettles.
Oh how sweet the bustling of the bee
against the flowers open in the stifling heat,
how hearts wish that day would never come
but always around sharp turns
the headlights kindle theaters of roses
in the immense and arid Roman park!
For this I said dust, from burns
around the curves, columbaria, gravel, urns . . .
Dust on the terraces; the irreverence
of the roses thrives in it, thirst
endlessly heightened by throbbing blood
where the foolish scarab digs.
The lady kicks, loses a sandal, wants it
rough, fouls herself in the grass and slobber.
Honey blocks the triumphs, o Latin bee.
Leaves the throats sated, blissful the roses.
2.
But you recognize this beginning. From caves, fountains,
opposites breathe motionless.
Where a rose opens a rose decays,
time is one but its truth is dual.
Come to the ice and to the scorching heat. Dare