Dawn *I had an upturned cart tonight
On the ridge of dawn
From which there rolled downhill
Sacks of grain
Against an orange sun, the mule
Had pulled himself up on his hooves
And went head bent limping
Down the bright line of day.I pick up
At the foot of the ridge
A screaming sack, unloose
My corset, offer him my nipple.
Valě *
You go about like a nymphet,
wrapped in your tinyness
with garlands, ribbons of paper and baskets,
or in the manner of a futurist princess,
projected into roseate distances
so present and yet so inaccessible
with your limpid eyes and gestures and little speeches
whispered to yourself alone
pattering on my high heels through the rooms,
a little sweet, a little haughty, like a goddess,
neat in your neat light:
six years,
comet, my comet,
you trailing behind your smiles
my golden hopes as you trail your veil.*Translated by Michael Pickering
THE GOLDFISH'S MOUTH
So I decided not to watch the film
of the little known and rarely seen
chubby archangel Gabriel
standing at the ticket kiosk
holding up his sword
like a living menace, a creature
full of gilded beauty, often too vital
in his golden and red garments, champion
of virtues among familiar saints with vacant eyes
and an intimately sad Madonna, revered
particularly by slaves.
I myself was a monk
locked in one of the yellowed cabinets
of that museum chamber
motionless but fired with zeal for conversion,
a Jesuit, a Franciscan, a Benedictine missionary,
exploiting the sensory impact of the music
coming out of that goldfish's mouth.
X
You sit and think about the number of objects available.
No-one can grasp the essence of this thing,
existence.
None can explain the reason for such
waste.
Nothing comes to anyone's mind.
They are looking at each other in the waiting room.
The black leather armchairs are squared like cubes.
Three men are sunk into them, relaxed. The woman
has not yet found a comfortable position.
And this is how the observation of space granted
to these four bystanders proceeds.
From the spotlights on the ceiling a beam falls
on their cheekbones with a modern and painful shadow.
The hairdresser has done his duty. Also the designer.
The people's black clothes indicate the end of the line.
On the marble pavement lie three red spheres.
Copyright © 2002, Erminia Passannanti. All rights reserved.
ERMINIA PASSANNANTI Poesia Italiana Contemporanea(Italian)
Transference:EU and Beyond(English)
Transatlantico: a section of Vico Acitillo Poetrywave
Born and brought up in Salerno, Erminia read Modern Languages at Salerno University. In 1991, she was one of 5 winners of the first Italian National Poetry Competition, "Laura Nobile". A selection of 30 poems from her collection Noi Altri was published in 1993 in the anthology "I Cinque Poeti del Premio Laura Nobile", with an introduction by Franco Fortini. In 1995, she won the First Prize in the same poetry competition with her collection Macchina, published by Manni Editore in 2000. The English translations of Macchina have been published in UK by Brindin Press: VIRTUAL BOOK http://www.brindin.com/vb9cover.htm . Her last collection of poems Exstasis (2003) is published with Lieto Colle. In the course of 2003, Ripostes will publish Mystics. She has been researching contemporary English, Irish and Welsh Poetry and has published extensively in this specialist area both as a literary critic and a translator. Her publications include translations of R. S. Thomas, Robin Llywellyn, Menna Elfyn, and the editing of 2 anthologies of poems and letters by Emily, Charlotte and Anne Brontë and one anthology of contemporary British poetry Gli uomini sono una beffa degli angeli (Ripostes, 1993).
Erminia Passannanti is the Oxford co-cordinator of "Dialogue among Civilizations through Poetry" ( www.dialoguepoetry.org ) organized by Ram Devineni and Larry Jaffe. Her bi-lingual e-zine Transference publishes poetry and literary criticism http://www.transference.org.uk . She has completed a doctorate at UCL on the poetry of Franco Fortini under the supervision of Professor David Forgacs. Erminia lives in Oxford where she teaches Italian Literature at St Clare's College and gives tutorials at St Catherine's College.
To contact her by e-mail, write to erminia.passannanti@talk21.com
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