Good Thief
You’re going to die in medias res
everyone does: the next project
open on your table:
garlic bulb and fountain pen,
that riddle. Three empty chairs
and yours emptier still.
And the room floats off: a crystal,
salt over the shoulder, like
a cross, and you’ve gotten away,
good thief, with your whole world
when no one was looking.
JOHN MARTONE’s volume of translations, Giovanni Pascoli: O Little One and Selected Poems has just appeared from Laertes Books. His own collections of poems include Homelands and So Long. Much of his works can be found online at https://it.scribd.com/user/19397174/John-Martone.
Twyckenham Notes 