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.