mama told me:
minodora, stop thinking about sam
when you go to the market
think of bacon, think of cabbage
be a proper woman
what would have been, i asked her
if beethoven hadn’t always had a bird
singing in his head?
yeah but beethoven, mama said
picking up the dust rag
and starting to clean the genius’s ears
and that’s only because i must
write about you
the same way i must sneeze
or yawn
i dreamt of you last night
you had a baby with a cat’s head
he was cute as a button
you were screaming your head off
‘come see what a tumbling rock
has to go through to reach a beautiful stillness’
it’s a big deal
when you forget to cross yourself
before going to sleep

Nora Iuga translated by Diana Manole and Adam Sorkin

Dear E. S.
poetry
is the world the human race
my own life
all flowered from the word
the transparent wonder
of a delirious ferment

When I find
one single word
in this my silence
it is hewn into my life
like an abyss

Giuseppe Ungaretti

Like this stone
of Monte San Michele
as cold as this
as hard as this
as dried as this
as stubborn as this
as utterly
dispirited as this

Like this stone
is my unseen
weeping

Death
we discount
by living

Giuseppe Ungaretti, 1916

your words like high speed winds
making noise on my skin
I put on a psychedelic lipstick
I take off the blue dress
(made in India)
- he tries new scores with
oxidized fingers
galvanizes the silence, the thirst, the dreams of the air-
I want to confess iloveyous louder
than the coffee machines. Louder
than the morning radio. Louder
than tram number 5.
life is what happens while
you stay, leave, come back and
redefine our melting point

I open the door,
you are there
with your carnival smile
and nothing prepares me
for this obscure truth:
imponderable I feel
when you say
my name my name my name

your little voice
                    Over the wires came leaping
and i felt suddenly
dizzy
     With the jostling and shouting of merry flowers
wee skipping high-heeled flames
courtesied before my eyes
                             or twinkling over to my side
Looked up
with impertinently exquisite faces
floating hands were laid upon me
I was whirled and tossed into delicious dancing
up
Up
with the pale important
                          stars and the Humorous
                                                  moon
dear girl
How i was crazy how i cried when i heard
                                            over time
and tide and death
leaping
Sweetly
          your voice