Mulberries
You traced this simple gesture with your hand:
you raised it to your face,
you stretched it towards my window,
as I was driving: I looked,
and against the hazy morning
light I counted them:
eight, eight mulberries with outspread branches
like the tail of a stuffed peacock,
a procession along the line
of our gaze, so perfect
that for a moment I forgot
time-tables and connections
and I slowed down to comprehend
how one might say of eight trees in a row,
'Look, how beautiful!' just as you said,
even if they had not decided to be that way, how everything
might just be a chain of senseless alternation,
and how a gesture of the hand and a smile
are enough to make, out of eight trees
in a row, an illusion of redemption.
Bricks
If you want a brick you should get
a brick, to mend a wall
or to fill up a hole
in a herringbone floor.
A brick: a solid that lives in three
dimensions; heavy, it feels
rough or porous, and, if left piled up
with others long enough, will become
a nest for centipedes, spiders, earwigs.
A brick that exists, that if split by a hammer
will sound tack just once, a beautiful sound,
a brick-sound, snappy, precise.
A brick is worth more than the words
that imitate it, resting
one on top of the other.
With poetry, I would like to make bricks.
The Moment After
Excerpts
Massimo Gezzi
translated from the Italian by Damiano Abeni and Moira Egan
Listen to 'Mulberries' performed in the original Italian by the poet:
Massimo Gezzi was born in 1976 in Sant'Elpidio a Mare (Italy). He is a contributing editor for the journals Nuovi Argomenti and Poesia and for the newspaper il manifesto. He has published two collections of poetry: Il mare a destra (Edizioni Atelier, 2004) and L'attimo dopo (Luca Sossella Editore, 2009, Metauro Prize). His poems have been translated into English, Spanish, French, German and Croatian.He has been an Italian Fellow for the Arts of the American Academy in Rome (2006-7), and a Fellow of the Civitella Ranieri Center (2010). After living and working for some years in Pavia and Rome, he's currently teaching at the Italian Institute of the University of Bern (Switzerland). Further information is available on his website.
Damiano Abeni (MD, MPH) is an epidemiologist who has published in Italy volumes of Bidart, Bishop, Bukowski, Ferlinghetti, Ginsberg, Strand, Simic, C.K. Williams, and many others. With Mark Strand, he edited West of your Cities, a bi-lingual anthology of contemporary American poets. With Moira Egan, he has published books in translation by John Barth, Mark Strand, Josephine Tey, and John Ashbery, whose collection, Un mondo che non può essere migliore: Poesie scelte 1956-2007, won a Special Prize of the Premio Napoli (2009). He has held fellowships at the Bogliasco Foundation and at the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center.
Moira Egan is the author of four poetry collections, most recently Spin (Entasis Press, 2010). Work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including Best American Poetry 2008. With Damiano Abeni, she has published books in translation by John Barth, Mark Strand, Josephine Tey, and John Ashbery, whose collection, Un mondo che non può essere migliore: Poesie scelte 1956-2007, won a Special Prize of the Premio Napoli (2009). She has been a Mid Atlantic Arts Fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts; Writer in Residence at St. James Cavalier Centre, Malta; a Fellow at the Civitella Ranieri Center; and a Fellow at the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center.
