Translation excerpt of Giorgiomaria Cornelio’s La consegna delle braci
[The Distribution of the Embers] (Luca Sossella Editore, 2021)
for Dylan Thomas
(in three acts)
No (!)
The evidence cannot
be bent.
The destroyer of temples
forgot
the igniting formula and the
inaugural foundation
of the flood
to prune the lassitude
from the white shroud
of mutation.
2. But the famine
will not fall forever:
who will reconstruct the etymon of hunger?
Nevermore ever in what’s ahead,
when we will have ceased
even the waiting,
the settling in of the out-of-tune
will thaw the larval signs, the nets,
the arachnoid, the syllables in disuse;
maybe even forcing the blood
into forgetfulness, almost as if
to de-educate the habitual writing,
certainly enough to siphon
into the body the rotating contraption
of a second baptism.
3. Heaven and cavern. But
if the ingredients are barely perceived
by the scale, how will
our animal, within itself, fulfill
the togetherness, once
they’ve both been cut, the letters
and the vast event that
propagated their sequel?
Copyright © 2023 Moira Egan. Reprinted with the permission of the poet.