[This language has no innocence] Poem by Antonella Anedda

This language has no innocence
- listen to how speeches break up
as if also here there were a war
a different war but war
all the same - in a time of drought.

And so I write with reluctance
with a few dry stumps of phrases
boxed into humdrum language
which I arrange so as to call out
down there as far as the dark
that sounds the bells

***

There's a window in the night
with two dark shapes asleep
dun as birds
whose bodies draw back against the sky.

I write with patience
to the eternity I don't believe in.
Slowness comes to me from silence
and from a freedom - invisible -
which the mainland's unaware of
- the island of a thought which spurs me
to rein in time
to give it space
inventing the desert for that language.

The word splits like wood
like a piece of wood cracked on one side
part the effect of fire
part of neglect.

Translated by Jamie McKendrick