WINTER 85 VOLUME 28 NUMERO 2 The Literary Review ITALIAN WRITING TODAY

 ANNA MALFAIERA

Towards the Imperfect

Learning to live

I don’t know any credible definition

Evident is the exigency of life

But you don’t know what it does mean

Living a life intensely

One lives as much as needed never more

Smile and anguish included

To go as far as the heart of love

And memory into the ripeness

Of experience to go as far as saying

That every being has got a right to be

As they see fit and that’s the way you live

A little. The past is past dissolved

Into letting oneself live only once.

I wil think slow without anxiety

I’ll think to feel some feeling

l’ll think about the feeling of something

And let myself think. I will think

That I care about myself more than I thought I did.

All right one of these days I’ll renounce

My prepossession for the real thing I’ll do

Severe self-criticism and ignoring

My fear of scabrous things

I’ll find delight in such and such an effect

I’Il recognize affinities in me

Heretofore misunderstood and by fortuitous

Coincidences and virtuoso numbers I’Il stage

My entry among aphorisms and hyperboles.

The Literary Review

I don’t avail myself of my own life so many things

Seem useless to me I don’t utilize

This or that diversion at the right moment

Same as I don’t grab what, within my reach,

Could seem to be mine. I hate possession.

It’s a hot and breathless high noon

A desert with no confirmation

A physical acquisition of direct

Credible private current

In the vision’d unmistakeable reality.

As far as I’m concerned the repudiation

is total. I don’t want to consider

Slings and arrows from animalous events.

I feel like being bloodless

Persuaded concluded forcibly

Composed on the rectilinear plane

Of ancient and actual contradictions.

I tell myself it’s natural can happen

It’s not at all unusual no more rage

No rancor any more no intermittence

Of desire and restraint. Ardor

Is a brief season. It affects

Our veins and empties our body

Even when the body trembles

And abandons itself

it does so to annul itself

In order to live in the instants which elude

Any appearance of practicality.

My body can sustain indifference

Mystify uneasiness insist

On its rigidity and doggedly fight

Its own fervors, deemed pointless, its lust for what

Is but a fleeting startling common thing.

I admit it, I’ve come to where the sense

Wavers, where something out of season

Would still show up and soon thereafter wither.

An insensible change is beginning

In my nature and marvel takes my breath

The marvel of the uncaptured shiver.

I don’t see any resolution. We speak

About the necessary actions all the time

But they are just announced never performed.

lrony chases the evidence, doesn’t affect it

Fears the action and the harshness of procedures.

Nausea exhausts every tender

Curiosity for learning and experience.

[1972-1980]

Translated by P.F. Paolini