Poetry

Poems from Lerici: Also

Paolo Bertolani/Jennifer Compton

Diu al ghe.
S’al gh’e la figa al ghé.
(There is a God.
If there’s the cunt there is God.)
—Cesare Zavattini

Against a pile of logs, at La Frediana,
you would say, touch me,
this body
must also die—
your legs open, and between them
I could see a sort of
pink and black swallow in flight:
which became all seeing,
and also spoke, when you said that.

Paolo Bertolani
translated by Massimo Bacigalupo and Jennifer Compton