Cover image: Mural painting in a Roman bath depicting a woman carrying fish, on display at Museo Nazionale Romano, Palazzo Massimo alle Terme. Photo by Pina Piccolo.
A Woman’s Strength
In every word
I write
I mischievously conceal
a precipice.
What boulder has ever been left intact?
I write for a woman
who has reached the end of her beliefs
to push her into the abyss
of poetry.
Words pulsate
in the stability of a moment
and only a creative woman
can turn with her poetry
a motionless lack
into kisses.
Dreams are not brushing
against addicted mirrors
nor is there rustling of leaves
in the echo of their certainty
The woman undresses!
Her feminine nakedness
her pleading lips
thick with the experience of kissing
take a gamble
between being and not being.
Courage
I was born
in the distance
in the body of a single word
neither dead nor alive
among the corpses of mirages
to bear their weight.
I learned that
on the road to the abyss
between you and me
lay despair and fulfillment.
I collapsed into a tear
as the audacity of paradox
had erased the border between you and me
There was no hope
of anchoring to the truth
and the whole meaning of the kiss
fell into contradiction.
Your gaze
stripped me of my poetry
that’s not what I wanted
my wish was the poetic beauty of two bodies
on the threshold of love’s abyss
clothing with kisses their nostalgic modesty
of belonging
to eternity.
The uncertainty of freedom
The poet’s parched breaths tremble
into a still image
besieged by the penetrating flow of life
her breasts swollen with intimate kisses
and her restless hair
left to flow into the clear water
unconcerned with her
motionless image
in the mirror
The poet has returned
like a dream spinning
out of control
and I
met her in my womb, looked into her eyes
and that bond between me
and the chastity of my love turned into a song
unfamiliar to my poems.
There, on the edge of the unknown
a foreign tear fell
and then
silence!
She departs
leaving in my hands the uncertainty of freedom
like a precious gift
and a memory on my lips
to build the din of kisses
out of the image of a still gaze
filled with love!
Nina Sadeghi is an Italian poet of Iranian origin. She lives in Italy and is a member of the literary association Lettera 7, curating events and readings dedicated to Italian and Persian poetry. She writes in Italian and Persian, exploring themes of memory, identity, and inner landscape. Her poems have appeared in various journals and books.
