Poems from Lerici: Of a Love

It is now winter wherever I look
but it’s fine up here, we are in my mother’s
small field
and it’s dusk.
For hours the springtime that you are
has been moving around me
—all that one can say of a love.

You speak to me from the tree you have climbed
to gather for me the sweetness of a fig with its honey-drop
(from below I can see the snow of your panties,
the soft skin).
And I also speak to you whom I love—to you
now flying between the leaves and the air.

Paolo Bertolani
translated by Massimo Bacigalupo and Jennifer Compton