to Desmond O’Grady Villa Discopoli 1907 A whole winter free at last for work, space and time that I can call my own, and in this clear productive atmosphere flourish like an aloe all alone. Outside the coasts of Magna Graecia, wind in the pines and years since I decided to live in simple silence like a monk obedient to the rules that I’ve elided. So I begin with basic exercises translating Sonnets from the Portuguese like someone in a church on bended knees fiddling with a string of worn out beads, searching for the sense of what is real,…