Translation: Bring a Stone to Your Chest, New Poems by Franca Mancinelli
Translated from the Italian by John Taylor
the earth turns, it is a cradle
and we fall asleep in the world, it turns
and we sleep another life.
We wake up here, still
weeping until
two good beasts look over us
with their warm breath.
*
from birth, the good felt in arms
lasts all life long, look
at this city, lifted from its weight
with all that happens and what it contains
—it has hands
that love, for foundations.
*
from the bed, in the moonless hour
carried by many arms
onto a sheet and laid out
with open hands on the grass
to question the stars
his chest, a pumice stone
on which to break bread.
*
my belly a pot that cooks
harm in the good I’ve known
a warmer that keeps the embers
of war under the ashes—protect
the circle of breathing.
*
you can fill a cabinet
but wealth is the sunlight
coming down, with many coins
at night. You rule the world
if you have the sea in your eyes.
*
walk, remember:
the shells at your ears,
at your lips the mug
that offers you every wave
—so lives the tongue
that dances in your body
*
old nameless saint
holy infant in the hospice
in every almanac is feted
the birth of your dying
—a white truth that smooths
the pebble mind.
*
pollywogs, darts of light
in the shaken air—the wind
revives the fire:
the globules go back up the veins
around the refracted body of the sun.
*
bring a stone to your chest
knock on your name
and the darkness we bear opens up
the space between the stars.
*
before it becomes light
the body is brightened earth
a lamp that someone turns on
to keep from getting lost.
*
we are born pierced: a string
between fibers and bones holds us
pearls on the chest of the universe.
Note: Franca Mancinelli’s poems have been written for the project Il museo in poesia: per una personale visione del dettaglio (The Museum in Poetry: For a Personal Vision of Detail), curated by Juan Carlos Ceci and Franca Mancinelli, under the auspices of the Istituti Culturali of the Republic of San Marino—Musei di Stato, sezione didattica e sezione archeologica. The illustrations of the Museo di Stato della Repubblica di San Marino are reproduced here with the courtesy and permission of the Istituti Culturali della Repubblica di San Marino.
Franca Mancinelli (b. 1981) is one of the most important poetic voices in Italian poetry and generous samples of her writings have often first appeared in The Fortnightly Review. All of her published work is available in John Taylor’s English translations. The Bitter Oleander Press has issued The Little Book of Passage (2018), At an Hour’s Sleep from Here (2019), as well as a volume gathering Mancinelli’s prose narratives and personal essays, The Butterfly Cemetery (2022). Her most recent Italian volume, Tutti gli occhi che ho aperto (Marcos y Marcos, 2020), which won two national Italian prizes, was published in English in 2023 by Black Square Editions as All the Eyes that I Have Opened.
