| Voi volevate l’io in tutte le cose Federica Maria D’Amato Voi volevate l’io in tutte le cose ma nei corti giorni di novembre il grande realismo della vita imponeva lunghe maniche di lana e laghi di silenzio nel regime degli armadi, dimenticarsi un po’ per rimanere vivi. Voi volevate il medicamento sudato alla scala dei morsi, gettarvi sul parquet nei pomeriggi pur avendo cent’anni e correre ancora nelle vie dei citofoni suonando alla bella che non ci sta pur essendo morta. Voi volevate il perdono e non la foglia segnata sulla riga del sorgere e tagliare, le larghe nevicate nei lampioni, il cadere senza oggetto dei bambini nei quaderni: sillabari arresi al muto scappare dei palloni. | You wanted the I in everything Federica Maria D’Amato You wanted the I in everything but in the fleeting days of November the great realism of life imposed long woolen sleeves and pools of silence in the regime of the closets, to forget a bit in order to stay alive. You wanted the balm hard-won by sting scale, to fling yourself on the parquet on afternoons although you were a hundred and to run still along the lanes with doorbells ringing at the pretty one’s who isn’t game even though she’s dead. You wanted forgiveness and not the leaf marked on the line of the rising and cutting down, the vast snowfalls in the streetlamps, the falling without object of children in notebooks: syllabaries surrendered to the mute sprint of balls. Translation ©Matilda Colarossi 2024 |
Federica Maria D’Amato (1984) is a museum curator at the Paparella Treccia Museum in Pescara. She works in the world of letters and modern art. She has published the poetry collections “La dolorosa” (Opera, 2008), “Poesie a Comitò” (Noubs, 2011), “Avere trent’anni” (Ianieri, 2013), “A imitazione dell’acqua” (Nottetempo, 2017) and “La montagna dell’andare” (Ianieri, 2023). She has translated and edited the Italian edition of “Book of friend and beloved” by Ramon Llull (Qiqajon, 2016) and the first Italian edition of “Where the hell have you been?” by Tom Carver (Ianieri, 2012). Among her works we also find the epistolary essay “Lettere al Padre” (Ianieri, 2016) and the book of thoughts and aphorisms “Un anno e a capo” (Galaad Edizioni, 2017).
I would like to thank Ianieri Edizioni and the poet, Federica Maria D’Amato for permission to translate and publish this beautiful poem.
The whole collection is wonderful: it was hard for me to choose only one (hopefully more will come one day).
I have said this before, but I will repeat myself: when I’m translating, I always think of the saying “you can’t see the forest for the trees”; my first impression of a poem is, of course, “the forest”, the whole, wonderful, beautiful insieme; translation, however, forces me to scrutinize every single tree, leaf, gust of wind − the words, the poetic devices, the metre – in order to transport them across linguistic borders. Sometimes I see or misinterpret the subtleties and risk losing the forest, sometimes the forest becomes, perforce, a little different but I am lucky enough to put it back together with the same hues as the original. Today’s poem was translated with the insight of the poet, and I thank her for saving me from the “trees”. M.C.
The collection of poems “La montagna dell’andare” can be found in bookshops and on-line here: https://www.ianieriedizioni.com/negozio/langiolo/poesia/la-montagna-dellandare/
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Image (mine): Gran Sasso, Abruzzo
parallel texts: words reflected 
Wow, Mati, you caught the forest!
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Thank you so much. It was a close call this time!
The “leaf” (v 16) almost got me (ironic, isn’t it?).
The first thing I thought was “stem and leaf” as in plot? And I imagined lines on a page, being judged at school perhaps; it was reinforced by the “sorgere e tagliare” on the following line (which seems to mean reading and writing in Sicilian dialect!) but not so.
“Leaf” as in leaf (as always associated with life and death, of the lines which cross through it). The poet was kind enough to enlighten me.
When I’m not sure of the meaning, I keep as close to the original as possible, so maybe I would have made the same choices. But who knows?
That’s the great thing about collaboration…my dead poets are not very collaborative!
Thanks again,
Matí
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