Mantis 20 (Spring 2022)
Translations
Ernesto Livorni
translated from the Italian by Carmine Di Biase
La neve nel caffè
“Senta: Lei viene spesso
qui per il caffè? Mi scusi:
se mi permetto è soltanto
perché, lo ammetto, sono
un frammento di quella
massa una volta partita
staccata stravolta, ma forse
contenta. Ora non so,
non son più della partita:
m’arrendo bevendo caffè.
Ordino sempre un cappuccino
e bevo, regolarmente, un caffè
latte” spiega all’avventore
con composta rassegnazione.
“Incomincia a nevicare:
in questi frangenti il caffè, il cielo,
l’umore sono tutto uno schianto.
Guardi: ogni tanto cade
un fiocco pesante, segna
una scia, nell’occhio,
precipita: quale forza
può mai dal cielo attrarlo
quaggiù?”
Coffee with Snow
“I wonder: do you come often
to this café? Forgive me
for asking, but I must confess,
I’m a fragment, was part, once,
of that crowd that left, that broke
away and was tossed about and perhaps
was happy. Now, though, I don’t know,
I’m no longer part of it.
Even this coffee, for me, is a way of giving up:
I always order a cappuccino and,
without fail, I wind up with mere coffee
with milk.” So, to the habitué, he explains,
with an air of calm resignation.
“It’s beginning to snow:
these are overwhelming moments, when the coffee, the sky,
your mood—all of it—crashes.
Look there: once in a while a heavy flake
falls and melts, leaving its trail
in your eye. What force is it that draws
a flake from the heavens
and makes it want to float
down here, to us?”
ERNESTO LIVORNI teaches Italian Language and Literature, at the University of Wisconsin – Madison. He has published Avanguardia e tradizione: Ezra Pound e Giuseppe Ungaretti (1998) and T. S. Eliot, Montale e la modernità dantesca (2020). He also translated into Italian and edited Ted Hughes, Cave-Birds: Un dramma alchemico della caverna (Milan: Arnoldo Mondadori Editore (Oscar), 2001). Livorni has also published three collections of poems. His fourth and last collection Onora il Padre e la Madre (Honor Thy Father and Mother) (Passignano sul Trasimeno (Perugia): Aguaplano – Officina del Libro, 2015) gathers new and collected poems.
CARMINE DI BIASE writes about English and Italian literature, and his poems have appeared in various journals. Last year his English translations of thirteen poems by Cesare Pavese appeared in L’anello che non tiene: Journal of Modern Italian Literature. Occasionally he reviews books for the Times Literary Supplement. He is Distinguished Professor of English Emeritus at Jacksonville State University in Alabama. His chapbook of poems, American Rondeau, is due out from Finishing Line Press in August of 2022.