|
|
|
|
Fabio Pusterla 
Simon Knight, Translator
Translated from the Italian by Simon Knight
Here it rains for days on end, sometimes for months,
The rocks are streaked black with water,
the paths heavy going.
On the banks of the ditches:
tadpoles, dark tin cans. A tar-stained
suitcase.
A dribble of oil runs
on the gravel. Above, cement.
Scratch the ground: refuse,
crumbling bricks, rabbits´ teeth.
One can imagine the sounds of human presence,
footsteps, tennis balls. Voices even.
Any fragment permitted provided it serves no purpose.
This being nothingness there´s room for anything,
and the little there is seems to have no being.
Even the tracks are perfectly inert,
the lizards motionless, the wagons
abandoned.
Then the hen-house. Things with no past.
Outside, a wheelbarrow
with no wheel. A well. A rusty bucket
with no bottom. The name of an idiot:
Luigino. Chickens´ feathers in the netting.
Holes. Broken connections.
Cruelty, though not as you conceive it.
Yes, I am nothing,
but what I am I desire strongly.
And now no one can steal my words.
|
