--Antonella Anedda (trans. Patrizio Ceccagnoli & Susan Stewart)
December, not yet Christmas, or Hanukkah.
Only a few lights lit in the streets,
no sleigh drawn by reindeer in shopwindows.
Instead of snow, a dark pouring rain
to dodge as passersby reject us.
No spruces, but sycamores with their white cankers.
It may be surprising not to link all of this to darkness,
emptiness, fear. Yet the dark isn't dark,
water isn't anxious, and indifference isn't an offense.
So long as we are alive, we might know, now and then,
an inexplicable peace: it happens. Maybe this is the joy
saints mention, the kind that asks for nothing,
it's merely careful, pressed to the earth, far from the stars.
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