8.14.2003

Anny Ballardini (here is a poetry site she hosts) has translated my local history poem In RI into Italian. & I didn't even ask her. This is great - it sounds better in Italian. Funny how it opens with a scene of someone walking to Italian class. Very emotional in a narratively-oppressive & logocentric way. A chapter was published in Apex of the M way back when. It opens like this (thanks to Michael Snider for advice on indents; I still haven't got it completely right, but. . .):


1

         New England October.  The earth grows ancient.
Leaves fall, and we fall with them,
slowly, almost floating.
Under pewter skies, the small yellow leaves
of the plane trees blaze more golden.
Classical. The crowded
streets are quiet, introspective. Leaves
cluster, flattened in low relief across
dark, rain-soaked
pavement.


Something European. An imaginary
Paris. Intellectual schoolgirls, hugging books,
walking under the high
somber stone spires, singing
out of eternity. Tremor of old
young love.


And then I saw her again,
moving ahead of me up the street, pigeon-
toed, a little
slowly, tentative, wearing some autumnal
shawl. Walking alone, toward
Italian class.

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