Italian posts – Page 2 – Bonnie McClellan-Broussard

La grande scelta: di Giacomo Gusmeroli

per te Daniela

La grande scelta

Capii che era lei quando era là al castagno; capii non per

le All Star alte, l’orecchino, – no; cose

……..diverse:

l’inciampo sul ciottolo, la lena, la falcata del passo.

……..Trattenuto,

il corpo accucciato alla roccia, cercavo un nascondiglio,

una sporgenza, ancora del tempo, prima di farmi vedere,

prima di chiamarla. Per me, lei, aveva atteso quel tempo,

quel tempo di travaglio e di incertezza, per me contemplativo

senza più averi e dalle scelte confuse. Mi appoggiai zitto a

……..piè del muro,

scrutai intento lo scorcio di torrente, come

……..scrutassi

la mia stessa vita. E “ciao” udii,

sentendo caldo, vicino il suo respiro. Sul cucuzzolo, il

……..monastero,

dava l’ombra di campane sulla cinta; e in un attimo,

l’attimo di uno sfioro, là diventò lontano e riannodato al passato.

Trovate QUI più informazioni su Giacomo Gusmeroli, incluso il suo ultimo libro LA BILANCIA IN EQUILIBRIO

* * * * *

An English translation of this poem can be found below:

for you Daniela.………………………….……………………………….

The choice

I knew it was her when she was there at the chestnut tree; I knew
not by the All-Stars, the earring, – no; by other
things:……..
the stumbling over a stone, the vigorous, coltish stride.
Reined in,……..
body curved against the rock, searching for a hiding place,
a recess, a bit more time, before showing myself,
before calling to her. For me, she, had waited that time,
that time of anguish and uncertainty, for me contemplative
without possessions and confused by choices. I leant silent
at the wall’s base,……..
scrutinizing intently the glimpse of the torrent, as if
I were scrutinizing……..
my own life. And I heard “hey”
feeling warm and close, her breath. At the summit
the monastery,……..
cast the belltower’s shadow on the barrier; and in an instant,
the instant of glancing touch, there I became far, tied again to the past.

(translated by Bonnie McClellan)

for more poems by Giacomo Gusmeroli on this blog, click HERE.

Sight lowering from “California Notebooks”: by Anna Mosca

These poems have disappeared from the website, find them again HERE.

You can read more of Anna Mosca’s “California Notebooks” by clicking HERE.

Leggi più dei “quaderni californiani” di Anna Mosca QUI.

Cosa può un attimo: di Giacomo Gusmeroli

Cosa può un attimo

(a Gervasio, Daniele, Dario, Giacomo, Giuliano)

Quel giorno e in quel giorno
soltanto avrei voluto volare. Da bambino.
Nel vuoto di uno strapiombo sotto

le fontane al Vàak dél Valgél*.
Durò un baleno. La seduzione della libertà
con un piccolo slancio del corpo,

l’invito nel vortice della voragine
ampia e sconcertante, e quel senso
angosciato di cosa può un attimo. E poi

come rientrato immaginai la vita
dentro un vento che trascina
via per spazi nuovi, e nel suo meglio

la terra depose sui miei nudi piedi

una goccia di ruscello

a tramontana.

Vàak: luogo esposto a tramontana
Valgél: ruscello che si forma in un leggero avvallamento
durante le piogge abbondanti

Trovate QUI più informazioni su Giacomo Gusmeroli, incluso il suo ultimo libro LA BILANCIA IN EQUILIBRIO

* * * * *

An English translation of this poem can be found below:

What could in an instant

(to Gervasio, Daniele, Dario, Giacomo, Giuliano)………………………………..

That day and in that day
only, I wanted to fly. As a child.
Into the blank void of a descent [below]

below the fountains at Vàak dél Valgél*.
It lasted a heartbeat. the seduction of freedom
with the slightest surge of the body,

the invitation into the wide, bewildering
vortex of the ravine, and that agonized
sense of what could in an instant. Then

reentering, imagining life
within the wind pulling away
into new spaces, and at it’s best

the earth laid upon my bare feet

a drop from the stream

of the north wind.

Vàak: an area exposed to the north wind
Valgél: a creek that forms in a slight depression
during heavy rains

(translated by Bonnie McClellan)

for more poems by Giacomo Gusmeroli on this blog, click HERE.

Sitting from “California Notebooks”: by Anna Mosca

These poems have disappeared from this site. You can find them again HERE.

You can read more of Anna Mosca’s “California Notebooks” by clicking HERE.

Leggi più dei “quaderni californiani” di Anna Mosca QUI.

A petal from ‘California Notebooks’: by Anna Mosca

Trova questa poesia QUI.

The English version of this poem has disappeared from this website but it can now be found HERE.

A reading of the poem by the poet can be heard by clicking on the player below:

(translation by Bonnie McClellan)

You can read more of Anna Mosca’s “California Notebooks” by clicking HERE.

Leggi più dei “quaderni californiani” di Anna Mosca QUI.

Ultimo cliente di Giacomo Gusmeroli

L’armonia nascosta è superiore alla manifesta
(Eraclito)

Ultimo cliente

Chiese di passargli il 41 delle Clark dallo scaffale.
Edith le fece ripetere il numero. Salii io sulla scala, sfilai
……………………………………………………………………………..[la scatola
e diedi il polacchino blu al cliente.
Erano le 19e30 sul mio orologio e dissi a Edith cosa provava.
……………………………………………………………………………..[Ella
accennò un sorriso e rifletté che era ora di chiudere. Dopo
………………………………………………………………………… [aver tolto
la chiave dalla toppa gliela consegnai.
Mi abbracciò e disse:
“Non porti niente…”
“Non mi serve nulla”
risposi.
“ In questo viaggio non voglio servire a due padroni”.

dapprima mi si levò
davanti…

…un acro di terra abbandonato sotto
la rupe. Compivo trent’anni.

Ero come un giglio del campo
quando l’ho visto infestato

di arastre spinescenti e mi piaceva
lo squarcio al confine

con il carruggio
per il Par Impusibèl,

di ciliegi e rosmarino selvatico.
E lì, me ne stavo con braghe

da spaventapasseri, e ogni tanto
negli attimi spogli guardavo

il gran cielo notturno
come da ragazzo

la prima notte d’alpeggi
accosciato sulla specola.

III

Poi nei mesi della Verna restavo
nella mia preghiera austera e sola

volevo molto e chissà volevo
fossero veri davanti

a Lui i miei sogni. Ma niente
era già terminato

dinamico era ogni divenire
e nella lotta maturai. Solo

andare, dovevo, e nessuna
certezza era più lontana

e imparare dai fatti,
come bambino cominciare ancora,

e se fu doloroso per quell’allora;
ora è il presente ed è il quotidiano,

è il tempo,
il senso…

– E chi te lo ha fatto fare, a te, di mollare tutto?
Parecchi mi interrogavano così:
– E – aggiungono, poi all’istante
– è troppo complesso, per dire, –
risparmiandomi la risposta:

con gli amici, invece
dissotterro il dubbio, (che è dar braccio
al passo difficile) della verità.
Mentre al Gianmario, dopo mesi, vicino alla tomba
di Carlo Carretto, ho detto che cerco

la mia religiosità:
– E la mia arte.

Trovate QUI più informazioni su Giacomo Gusmeroli, incluso il suo ultimo libro LA BILANCIA IN EQUILIBRIO

An Engliah translation of this poem, from Giacomo Gusmeroli’s most recent book LA BILANCIA IN EQUILIBRIO can be found below:

“The harmony hidden is superior to that manifest”
(Heraclitus)

Last customer

She asked that I pass her the Clark’s in a 9-1/2 from the shelf
Edith asked her to repeat the size. I went up the ladder, slid out
[the box

and gave the blue ankle boots to the client.
It was 7:30 pm by my watch and I asked Edith what she thought.
[And she
with a slight smile agreed that it was time to close. After
[having taken
the key from the lock, I gave it to her.
She hugged me and said:
“You won’t take anything…”
“I won’t need anything”
I replied.
“On this voyage I don’t want to serve two masters”.

at first arose
before me…

…an acre of abandoned land below
the scarp. I was thirty.

I was as a lily of the field
when I saw it overrun

with briars and I liked
the opening where it bordered

the beaten path
to the Seemingly Impossible,

wild cherries and rosemary.
And there, I stayed with scarecrow

trousers, and every so often
in bare moments I looked

at the broad night sky
as when as a boy I passed

my first night in the high alps
hunkered in the observatory.

III

Then in the Vernal months I stayed
alone within my austere prayers

I wanted much and who knows I wanted
that they were true before

Him, my dreams. But nothing
was already done

everything yet to become in motion
and in the battle I matured. Only

to go, I had to, and no
certainty was more distant

and learning through doing,
beginning again as a child,

and if it were a painful then,
now it is a daily present,

it is time,
sense…

– And who made you do it, you, let it all go?
Many have interrogated me so:
– And – then they add, at the moment
– it is too complex, to say, –
sparing me my response:

with my friends
I unearth instead my doubt, (which is to offer a hand
through a difficult pass) of the truth.
While to Gianmario, months later, near the grave
of Carlo Carretto, I said I was in search of

my devotion:
–And my art.

(translated by Bonnie McClellan)

Calabrian Chronicles: The Ovile of Mimmo and Peppe – Part Two

If you haven’t read “The Ovile of Memo and Pepe: Part One” (click here).

Memo and Pepe at the Ovile — Peppe and Mimmo

Inside, the room was clean and sparse. A bucket of water just inside the door held the meter-and-a-half-long wooden stick with which they stirred the cheese. The cheese was boiling in a black iron cauldron, with a mouth a meter wide, that hung over a wood fire burning so hot and clean that I do not recall even a breath of smoke in the tiny room. Some sausages hung from the rafters; on a table catty-corner from the fire a wood plank table held up two bottles of wine and several packs of cigarettes. In the far corner, opposite the fire, Mimmo and Peppe were busy at a shallow-sided, waist-high stone sink, squeezing whey from the cheese through plastic sieves. They looked up from their work, smiling, verbally poking at Matthew for having taken so long to bring his family down to the ovile, saying hello to me and saving all of the best sweet talk for Robin.

Now I’m going to cheat, this is a blog and not a novel so I can show you a picture of Mimmo and Peppe that I’ve posted above and ask you to look at their hands. They are amazing hands, impressively large and smooth, these hands make almost anything they hold look small. I’m also going to break another writer’s rule and slip into something more comfortable, the present tense:

They offer us some curds of the cheese they’re cooking; it tastes like fresh farmers cheese, bright and dry. Mimmo explains that this is the first cooking and that they will cook it again, making it into creamy, rich ricotta (literally: re-cotta/re-cooked). In the meantime they are busily pressing and compressing the cheese, the whey runs down the slanted work surface and into the drain feeding the rivulet of whey specked with curd that we encountered on the way in. Matthew pops another bit of crumbly bright cheese in my mouth and I understand why the dog outside is so happy to lap up the remnants.

Robin is squirming and agitated by the fire, the dark room and the two robust men with hands bigger than her head. She says alternately, “want to go OUTside.” and “want to see BABY goats!” She wants nothing to do with the fresh cheese. She’s squiggled down out of my arms and hoisted up onto her papa’s shoulders. Matthew asks for permission to go through the door next to where Mimmo and Peppe are working; this is the door that leads to the enclosed concrete part of the ovile where all the goats, too young to go out to pasture, are kept.

Ducking through the door we see goats of all ages from ones that look grown to ones that are barely standing, only 24 hours old. Amongst the goats is a lone lamb with his tight white wool looking tidy in comparison to the splendor of speckles, spots and stripes that embellish the surrounding swirl of goats. Their legs and bellies thick with damp feces, the baby goats are still enchanting. Robin shimmies down from her father’s shoulders and her sneakers smack on the wet cement. The baby goats resist her attempts to pat them by dancing away on their delicate hooves in a wave, like startled ballerinas on point. We explain that they’re nervous, that she needs to walk slowly so she can get a little closer. She won’t get her hands on one this time but she’s happily talking to and about them, informing the world in general about which ones are what colors, and which ones are sleeping, or jumping. Then, like any toddler, her attention span is used up and she wants to go.

We come back into the cheese making room where Mimmo and Peppe have started the second cooking. Our shoes, everyone’s shoes, are slimed with goat shit so I am relieved to see that Mimmo meticulously rinses his hands and keeps the cheese stirring stick always up or resting in the bucket of clean water. Robin cannot be tempted to try the cheese and now wants to go outside, see pigs, see pretty, sad puppy. As we walk back down the path towards the pig pens Mimmo and Peppe’s brother, Gianni, is coming up the path with another man, he sees Robin and scoops her up on to his hip, like a veteran papa, and chucks her startled cheek with his broad knuckle and tells her what a lovely girl she is.

Robin balks at being picked up by Gianni but she doesn’t cry she just wriggles and chants her latest mantra, “mama gon pick you up!” Gianni gets the message and puts her down. He, the stranger and Matthew all walk back up to the cheese room and Matthew returns with a small, plastic basket full of hot and creamy fresh ricotta. He spoons bites into my mouth at happy intervals as we walk up and back down the path. Robin is balanced on my hip and we alternately shoot the breeze and point out things to her, rocks in the cliff face, flowers by the side of the road. The ricotta is magnificent.

To be continued (Click here for part three)

If you’re curious to see when Robin finally got her hands on the baby goats, click here: Robin of the goats

Calabrian Chronicles: Caulonia outside the walls – The Story of Mimmo and Peppe’s Ovile

In the spaces between the rains the sky runs and falls; gathers itself and plunges again towards the sea. Cumulonimbus titans strike their shins on the horizon line as they stumble through the Mediterranean, dead drunk and anxious to reach Ithaca. This is a place where mothers still name their sons Ulysses.

The houses are like barnacles on a rock; roof tiles buried in lichen and slathered with concrete where they meet at the crown in an uneasy sea-sick ridge. Below the rust-eaten white iron boundary of the balcony-rail I can see two flaps of a prickly pear struggling out from between two heavy arcs of terracotta.

The edge of the sky at dawn over the water is like Montale’s description, a singing strip of metal lath, a kite string straining against the rebounding vault of blue. His was the western sea, the Ligurian coast, a sunset light. Here the Ionian dawn makes eastern music…Jove’s mute mistress writes her name in the sand with a round hoof…IO.

Despite lying just above the Ionian Sea, named for Jove’s mythic mistress transformed into a cow, Caulonia Superiore is a place of goats. The goats, along with a few sheep, are kept in enclosures called ‘ovile’ just outside the town walls. There should be a better English translation for the Italian word, “ovile” (oh-VEE-layh) but there is not. “Fold” is inadequate, it’s too short in sound and too broad in meaning. “Goat fold” although accurate, is just plain ugly, clanking off the tongue like a broken carburetor. I mention this translation difficulty because I am about to tell the story of “The Ovile of Mimmo and Pepe” and I don’t want to leave readers scratching their heads as to what an “OH-vile” is until they reach the third paragraph. And so we begin…

View of the land below the Piazza della Carmine - Caulonia Superiore — View of the land below the Piazza della Carmine in Caulonia Superiore – the Ovile is on the far right towards the bottom…way down there.

THE STORY OF THE OVILE OF MIMMO AND PEPPE

This morning Matthew, Robin and I woke up early to go and visit the ovile of Mimmo and Peppe so that Robin could see the baby goats and we could all have a breakfast of fresh ricotta. The three of us piled into my big blue van and Matthew managed to squeeze, nudge, and coerce it through the slender streets of Caulonia Superiore until we found ourselves on the dirt road that meandered below the vaulting walls that are still (just barely) sustaining Piazza della Carmine above. Matthew parked the van atilt on the shoulder of the road, leaving room for another car to pass, maybe.

The ovile was what you would expect: a big fenced in plot of land for the grown sheep and goats in which every hint of something green had been eaten. Three rambunctious, gangly white puppies tumbled over one another, and a minor river of water, goat shit and urine ran across the road and under the front tires of my van. Adjacent to the large open pen was a roofed enclosure where the baby animals were kept separate and which was abutted by a cinder block shed where Peppe and Mimmo were working making the cheese.

As we walked up the path towards the porch that fronted the shed we passed by a fluffy white dog whose eyes were badly infected, the skin all around them pitted and inflamed. Robin wanted to pet it until she got a little closer and her good will towards animals banged flat up against something sad and ugly. She solved the struggle by resorting to reassuring herself with words, “Bobbie give sad puppy hug, now she happy puppy!” She looked obliquely at the dog while hugging her own round, pink arms. I found my self wondering when we should start teaching her to look at the ugly things straight on and with compassion instead of looking at the ground and calling them beautiful; then I remembered that I was still working on that one myself and our daughter was not yet two years old. Today would not be the day.

We passed by a small fenced in garden with olive and lemon trees. Across from this were a series of low-walled concrete pens one of which housed two large, pink pigs. Matthew held his hand down to their wiggly snouts saying, “See, it’s a pig. He has a wiggly nose.” Robin edged nervously against my leg saying, “Mama gonna pick you up. Don’t want pigs.” For the first time she was seeing the real animals and they were not wearing plaid shirts and blue jeans like the small, shiny, cartoon pigs in her picture book. They were twice as big as she, I would have been nervous too. I lifted her up. “Lets go see Mimmo and Peppe and the BABY goats,” I said.

As we neared the shed we saw another white dog, this one young and healthy, tied up near a large tree. He was lapping up the water and whey and bits of curd that came from a tube functioning as a drain that led from the cheese making shed out the door and on to the concrete sluice that angled down from the porch. As we reached the open door to the shed Matthew said the obligatory “con permesso” as we walked in.

To Be Continued….(click here for part two)

Calabrian Chronicles: Translations of poetry by Lucia d’Amato

I found these poems by chance in a book amongst a pile of books and papers on a side table in an efficency apartment loaned to us in Caulonia (RC). I had never heard of Lucia d’Amato and, unfortunately, I don’t think you will find her book “Sostenere il sogno” anywhere other than this table, next to its clot of dusty papers. These few poems express the dense and lovely reflections of what I saw everyday that late winter and early spring in Caulonia Superiore.
casa a piazza della carmine caulonia

CALDI PASSATEMPI

Caldi passatempi nell'aria,
E un vago color mattone
nel cuore,
parla di case abitate.
Un sonno silenzioso.
L'inverno passa.

WARM PASSTIMES

Warm passtimes in the air
and a vague brick colour
in the heart,
speaks of inhabited habitations.
A silent sleep.
Wintertime passes.

view towards the sea from caulonia superiore LE PRIME ORE D’UN POMERIGGIO

Le prime ore
d'un pomeriggio brullo,
color di terra, di sabbia, e d'oro,
e la solennità
dei gochi più sereni
del tempo.
Dall'autunno al'inverno
andando verso l'estate,
come un grosso pacco
la campagna si svolge.
Un gregge sta,
come una nevicata sporca
Da un rotolio di nuvole
sguscia il sole.

THE FIRST HOURS OF AN AFTERNOON

The first hours
of a bare afternoon,
Colour of earth, of sand,
and of gold,
and the solomnity
of weather's more serene games.
From Autumn to Winter
now tending towards summer,
the countryside unwraps herself
like a fat package.
A flock stands
like dirty snow fallen
from a roll of clouds
that just slip-shelled the sun.

nota bene: Original poems in Italian by Calabrian poet Lucia D’Amato as published in “Sostenere il Sogno”. Translations in English copyright 2009 Bonnie M. McClellan.

ENGRAVING (for Angel and Ronit): by Bonnie McClellan-Broussard

ENGRAVING

Grief must sometimes be taken in sips,
like coffee too scalding and bitter to swallow.

Each new grief holds within
an elder one in-nested.

The ‘no’ un-screamed arises:
is shattered, then compressed.

The terror of resignation
(winter’s hard companion)

reverberates down through
calcified strata all the way to

the first pearlescent grief:
a burst balloon, a lost gift.

INCISIONE

– il dolore a volte dev’essere preso in sorsi,
come cafè troppo bollente e amaro da ingoiare. –

Ogni nuovo dolore racchiude
un vecchio innesto.

Il non-urlatò ‘no’ sorge:
va in frantumi e si comprime.

Il terrore di rassegnazione
(dura compagna d’inverno)

riverbera verso in basso, attraverso
strati calcificati, fino all’arrivo

del primo dolore perlescente:
palloncino scoppiato, un dono perduto.

Angel Pfeifer Raiter, poeta : 11 dicembre 1979 – 3 febbraio 2012
Ronit Dovrat, pittore: 12 maggio 1955 – 15 dicembre 2011

Bonnie McClellan-Broussard

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To Be Continued….(click here for part two)

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nota bene: Original poems in Italian by Calabrian poet Lucia D’Amato as published in “Sostenere il Sogno”. Translations in English copyright 2009 Bonnie M. McClellan.

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