Translator’s Note
The collection from which these poems are taken, I nomi—meaning both “names” and “nouns” in Italian—conceives of poetry as a grammar of experience. Meditating on the act of writing as one of recognition and sense-making, the collection expresses the desire for closeness and connection inherent in the act of naming things. These themes are woven together in a series of conversations that imagine the words we say as a form of love and communion, through which the I embraces what lies outside itself and joins in what Pugno calls “the murmur of the world.”
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1.
The mind creates
you from minds, from bodies,
your,
yours,
the you that is a forest where
what is nameless hides
and is called
light, star, intermittent
with its own – lost, lost –
Morse code.
The only language you know
the form you know as love
as one,
complete
complete.
So it speaks to you, mind-body
among minds and bodies, and words –
every word of yours –
are the name of love and the world’s other names.
1.
La mente crea
il tu dalle menti e dai corpi,
il tuo,
i tuoi,
il tu che è il bosco dove si nasconde
quello che non ha nome
ed è detto
luce, stella, con intermittente
il suo – perduto, perduto –
codice Morse.
La sola lingua che conosci
la forma che conosci come amore
in uno,
assoluto,
assoluto.
Così ti parla, mente corpo
tra menti e corpi, e le parole –
ogni tua parola –
sono il nome d’amore e gli altri nomi del mondo.
2.
We converge in a pronoun,
through the name
you
the space it takes up,
where it lodges in our heart,
black pebble, sliver
of butter
it gets better towards dawn,
tells you
that it is like the sun,
solar god, divine day.
2.
Coincidiamo nel pronome,
per il nome,
il tu,
lo spazio che occupa,
il posto che prende nel cuore,
un ciottolo nero una scheggia
di burro,
va meglio verso l’alba,
dice a te
che è solare,
divinità solare, dèi del giorno.
3.
A patch of sun has closed in
on your body almost becoming one
with the body itself
absorbing it, every ounce of sun
and so it is,
you don’t move, you won’t
but its warmth still radiates
making up for your own, that has
gone away. We might still touch it
for a while longer
then be touched by it,
blindly and every day
you find,
we find words again.
3.
Il quadrato di sole si è stretto
sul tuo corpo fin quasi a coincidere
col corpo stesso
ad assorbirlo, tutto il sole possibile
ed è così,
non ti alzi, non ti alzerai
però il calore ancora emana
compensando il tuo, che è
andato via. Ancora per un po’
potremo toccarlo poi
ne saremo toccati,
a occhi chiusi e ogni giorno
ritrovi,
ritroviamo parole.
4.
The divine is effortless, says
the voice you remember,
your fingers search and find
in your pocket, between your clothes and warm body
the firestone
and a fake plastic pearl ring
so beautiful you recall,
plaything,
object bearing fire,
thing not object,
find that things hold
the promise of fire inside them,
its precious scent, like
a wild body’s, identical to yours.
4.
Il divino è senza sforzo dice
la voce ricordata,
cerchi con le dita e trovi
in tasca o tra gli abiti e il calore del corpo
la pietra focaia,
insieme a un anello di plastica con la perla finta
che ricordi bellissimo,
giocattolo,
oggetto che contiene il fuoco,
cosa non oggetto,
e che le cose abbiano
in sé la possibilità del fuoco,
il suo odore prezioso come quello
di un corpo selvatico, identico al tuo.
5.
You carry words in your pocket like walnuts
in a plastic box
in a land near war,
where you don’t know
when you’ll eat again,
when to sleep –
others know, or maybe they don’t,
it’s no matter in the end
you are only a voice and you say
that home is here, it is this
but home has always been your body
and words belong to it,
you’ve held them in your fist
so you can touch them, touch
you through them
walnuts of gold, too hard for teeth and mouth
will shimmer in the forest –
5.
Porti le parole in tasca come noci
in una scatoletta di plastica
in un paese di quasi guerra,
dove non sai
quando potrai mangiare di nuovo,
quando dormire –
altri lo sanno, o forse neanche loro,
in fondo non importa
sei solo la voce e dici
che qui è casa, che è questa
invece la casa è sempre stata il tuo corpo
e le parole ne fanno parte,
le hai strette in pugno
perché puoi toccarle, toccare
te attraverso di loro
le noci d’oro, troppo dure per i denti e la bocca
brilleranno nel bosco –
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Laura Pugno (Rome, 1970) is an Italian poet, novelist, essayist, playwright and translator. Her publications include several poetry and essay collections, one short story collection, and six novels. Sirene (Einaudi 2007, Marsilio 2017, Premio Libro del Mare, Premio Dedalus) was recently translated into French by Inculte/Actes Sud, and La ragazza selvaggia (Marsilio 2016), won the prestigious Premio Campiello Selezione Letterati. From 2015 to 2020 she was the Director of the Italian Cultural Institute and of the Italian Film Festival in Madrid,. She lives in Rome, where she works as a cultural expert for the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
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Julia Nelsen translates from and into Italian. Her work has appeared in Two Lines and the Chicago Review, among other publications. A San Francisco native, she holds a doctorate in comparative literature from the University of California, Berkeley, and an MA in European languages from the University of Milan.
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Edward Lee is an artist and writer from Ireland. His paintings and photography have been exhibited widely, while his poetry, short stories, non-fiction have been published in magazines in Ireland, England and America, including The Stinging Fly, Skylight 47, Acumen and Smiths Knoll. He is currently working on two photography collections: Lying Down With The Dead and There Is A Beauty In Broken Things. He also makes noise music under the names Ayahuasca Collective, Orson Carroll, Lego Figures Fighting, and Pale Blond Boy.
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