Roberto Amato

The city is designed very well.
Moving about is easy even for someone like me who has no sense of direction.

We always end up at the same square: the same huge equestrian statue
...

The pigeons listen to us converse.
We talk about things that are almost impossible:
the open-air theatre of Terpsichore
...

There are goats up there
as always in place of the doves.
There are noises that keep the world awake.
There I am and I'm moving
...

Yesterday
I visited the house of Leopardi.
A beautiful apartment on the Lungarno.
The custodian was a sleepy sort of man.
...

The infinite is like this:
there are only the things I like.

For example
...

I believed I was me
when I lay beside myself at night
(on my right side so I could turn my back to the world).
My mother was not yet me
...

So very little time
to write to you

eternity has shrunk
and my wife is taking me away
...

Yes
she may be right
but eternity has got incredibly smaller
and I am quite fond of these angels
...

This past night I found myself drowning in quicksand
the bed
kept falling to one side
and there was no safety even on the deck of the pillow
...

The pigeons on this obscure meadow are completely black
and they don't cross the water in flight
they walk on bridges with stone steps
and parapets painted with egg tempera
...

I don't want anyone to accompany me beyond the bridge
(where the last stair descends the water
and the gondoliers get lost)
...

The water is as green as an infusion
an overcooked nettle chowder: it was boiled for much too long
and for . . .
a time that was so interminable it can no longer
...

. . . and yet
it happens

when I put my hand
there
...

You may say that between me and you
a world exists that no-one can see.
A world of children and schools
and of slices of bread and butter and enormous
...

We happened to enter unfamiliar places
for example my bathroom or your broom closet.
Then we observed our domestic animals at length
especially the owl (a bad omen
...

I'd like to tell your husband:

Do you think you have a lyrical sense of the world?
He
would think about it for just a second and then reply
...