THE POEM BOOK

 AMELIA ROSSELLI & WALLACE STEVENS
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AMELIA ROSSELLI
General Strike 1969

lamps lit to burn and the howl
of a calm daring crowd
find you suddenly involved
in something serious: that is
taking a risk! May this seeming
childishness also kill off my
incapacity to care.

A God hidden within could have been enough
my egoism was not enough for me

it was not enough for these people
to taste the richness of revenge

so soon smothered. We had
to express what was best: give in

to a rhetoric that was a howl
of protest against destruction

fearless in our fearful
houses. (I lost that vertical
love for a solitary god,
revolutionizing myself
in the people, removing
myself from heaven).

Invìslatcd hy Lucia Re ami Diana Thow


in the original italian:

AMELIA ROSSELLI
Sciopero generale 1969

lampade accesissime e nell'urlo
d'una quieta folla rocambolesca
trovarsi lì a far sul serio: cioè
rischiare! che nell'infantilismo
apparente schianti anche il mio
potere d'infischiarmene.

Un Dio molto interno poteva bastare
non bastò a me il mio egoismo

non bastò a queste genti il sapore
d'una ricchezza nella rivincita

del resto strozzata. Dovevamo
esprimere il meglio: regalarsi

ad una retorica che era urlo
di protesta ad una distruzione

impavida nelle nostre impaurite
case. (Persi da me quell'amore
al verticale, a solitario dio
rivoluzionandomi nella gente
asportandomi dal cielo.)

__________ 

TPB'S notes: until recently Amelia Rosselli's work was known probably to just Paolo Pasolini (ok, to some critics, some experts and/or the cultural elite of italy let's say). in any case, we found it difficult to find a clean full copy of a poem. though the poem above is not really the style she's known for (for instance, this is much more pared down and less problematic...) it's all we could find for now, its original copy attached along with translation.

WALLACE STEVENS 
Man Carrying Thing

The poem must resist the intelligence 
Almost successfully. Illustration: 

A brune figure in winter evening resists 
Identity. The thing he carries resists 

The most necessitous sense. Accept them, then,
As secondary (parts not quite perceived

Of the obvious whole, uncertain particles
Of the certain solid, the primary free from doubt,

Things floating like the first hundred flakes of snow
Out of a storm we must endure all night,

Out of a storm of secondary things),
A horror of thoughts that suddenly are real.

We must endure our thoughts all night, until
The bright obvious stands motionless in cold.

_______ 

TPB's note: “Nothing lasts long enough to make any sense...There are fragments and snatches of fragments. The momentary fingerings of a guitar. Things as they are—but not really in the Wallace Stevens manner. The way things have always been. A torn bit of newspaper whose words have neither beginning nor end but the words upon it. A splinter of melody piercing the ear with a brittle note. Nothing lasts long enough to have been. These fragments of everything descend upon us haphazardly. Only rarely do we see the imminence of wholes. And that is the beginning of art.” — Dambudzo Marechera, The House of Hunger.