The Swiss Riveter: MULBERRIES by Massimo Gezzi, translated by Damiano Abeni and Moira Egan

You traced this simple gesture with your hand:

you raised it to your face,

you stretched it towards my window,

while I was driving: I looked,

and against the hazy morning

light I counted them:

eight, eight mulberries with outspread branches

like the tail of a stuffed peacock,

a procession along the line

of our gaze, so perfect

that for a moment I forgot

timetables and connections

and I slowed down to comprehend

how one can say of eight trees in a row

‘look, how beautiful!’, as you said,

if they have not decided to be that way,

and everything’s

just a chain of senseless alternation,

or whether a gesture of the hand and a

smile

are enough to make, out of eight trees

in a row, an illusion of redemption.

By Massimo Gezzi

Translated by Damiano Abeni and Moira Egan

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Massimo Gezzi was born in Sant’Elpidio a Mare. He has published three volumes of poetry: Il mare a destra, L’attimo dopo and Il numero dei vivi, and was awarded the Metauro, Marazza and Carducci prizes. He has also published Tra le pagine e il mondo, a collection of his reviews and interviews with various poets.

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Photo of Massimo Gezzi ©Silvestar Vrljić