Practical Activities

^{translated from the Italian by Peter Covino}

If the poet is reduced to carrying out
practical activities, to get by
using the phone, hustling, working
even against God, or the more
lowercase one of poetry, who
should we blame? Or if by going
in winter, into the tepid cold
in the heart of January toward Campo dei Fiori
you meet a young man who’s passed by
crime’s true domain
and craves you along the slack
river, in the muck, wind
encroaching, ripping you apart, leaving
awestruck by cum, who is
to blame?
But the days pass, a lifetime
without complaint, comforted by
the idea that there’s still life ahead,
and it’s long, even if tomorrow we could
die, just breathing