from Disadorna (peQuod 2022). Cover image: Eva Bovenzi, “On the face of it”, 2024.
Wounds on her hands,
dust blurring against the light
– don’t look at me, don’t touch me,
I’m just a crumpled being,
said the girl,
with braided hair
and a light mark on her shoulder blade,
at the tip of blossoming, a wing.
*
All around is a mothly gray
flaking ash darkens the day
unfinished words fleeing
still moaning after all these years.
Tell me about a time without flowers
of endlessly repeated steps
of darkness foretelling more darkness
of striking up the farewell song.
We have been foreigners
yet didn’t know it.
For bread and a wool blanket
we gave thanks, and so for the fire.
*
Unadorned moth
quietly flying beside me,
while bearing me greetings from the dead,
tonight an ancient, sweeter lullaby.
***
To resist like a little insect
to be a pure living thing gone insane
crashing against the deception of glass
beauty that fades in the glow.
***
If you touch the thin membrane
that envelops me I am still a cocoon
an exploding cocoon I am a butterfly
wings going crazy on my back.
.
Look for me in white things
in white hands that write
and leave traces of ink
black embroideries to be deciphered
like a landscape of dry branches
like a face carved on wings.
You who know it, tell me what it is
to be light in this lament
coming from far away.
To be light in the roar
in desire, in hope
when life crashes.
Tell me the sin in the outstretched hand,
in the language of the body that becomes song.
***
We will forget everything
not knowing will be our truth
as the water starts to overflow
we’ll go over our initials again.
.
Rossella Renzi (photo by Giacomo Alessandrini) lives in Italy, near Ravenna and teaches literature in high school. Her poetry collections include: I giorni dell’acqua (L’Arcolaio, 2009), Il seme del giorno (L’Arcolaio 2015), Dare il nome alle cose (Minerva, 2018), Disadorna (Italic Pequod, 2022) and the essay Dire fare sbocciare, Poetry workshops at school, published as an e-book. (Pordenonelegge, 2018). She is one of the editors of the journals «Argo» and «Poesia del nostro tempo». For the publishing house Argolibri, she directs the «Territori» series for which she edited the Argo 2020 volume L’Europa dei poeti. With other authors, she edited L’Italia a pezzi. Antologia dei poeti italiani, poems written in dialect and in minority languages. She works to deepen and expand conversations between poetry and various other art forms. She collaborates with the Independent Poetry Association, which is active in organizing events in the Romagna area. She graduated in 2003 from the Alma Mater of Bologna with Professor Alberto Bertoni, writing the thesis «Eugenio Montale and the poetry of the second half of the twentieth century».
