Mariangela Gualtieri | Non sono capace, amore / I cannot, my love

Non sono capace, amore, di farti un canto.

Tu sei tutto di spine e di fuoco

e mi tieni lontana dal tuo cuore

pericoloso. Io non so bastarti alla gioia

e così poco così poco mi pare

t’incanto, sollevo quell’ombra scontrosa

Roberto Ferri

che tu sei tutto d’amaro e furore

tu sei in urto e sperdimento

mio velocista, mio primatista del cuore

mio barbarico ragazzo di vento

mio torrente furioso

arrivi alla mia acqua quieta

con onde e sonagli e pepite d’oro.

Vecchio fiume saremo un bel giorno io e te,

io acqua e tu moto, io sponda e tu vento,

io pioggia e tu lampo,

io pesce e tu guizzo d’argento

io luna riflessa, tu cielo tu spada

d’Orione, tu tutto l’amore umano

che tento che tento

d’amarti per bene

mio grembo splendenza.

Mariangela Gualtieri

Mariangela Gualtieri | I cannot, my love

I cannot, my love, I cannot make you a song.

You are all thorns, you’re all fire

and keep me away from your perilous heart.

I cannot be enough for your joy

and seem to delight you but little, so little

hardly lifting that riotous shadow

you are all bitterness and wrath

you are in the clash and bewilderment

my racer, my heart’s record-breaker

my barbaric boy made of wind

my stream raging into

the quiet of my water

with waves and with rattles and nuggets of gold.

Some old river we’ll be one fine day, you and I.

William Brymner

I water and you tide, I shore and you wind,

I rain and you lightning,

I fish and you silver swish

I moon reflected and you sky and sword

of Orion, you all of the love of mankind

that I’m trying I’m trying

to love you for good love you well

my womb glow of light.

Peder Severin Krøyer | Summer evening on the beach at Skagen. The painter and his wife, 1899

Poet and playwright, Mariangela Gualtieri is regarded as one of Italy’s most compelling and innovative voices.

Mariangela Gualtieri was born in Cesena, in Romagna. She graduated in architecture at the IUAV in Venice.

Gualtieri begins her writing career in one of the most important Italian contemporary theatre group, the Valdoca Theatre Company, which she founded together with the director Cesare Ronconi in 1983.

She participates in every staging by Ronconi, ready to sense and give voice to the scene's whirl of forces.

Since the beginnings she takes particular care of the oral dimension of poetry - through readings in verses both in Italy and abroad - focusing on the voice amplification system and on the interaction between poetic verse and live music.

Her pedagogical activity runs uninterrupted through her workshops devoted to writing and, more recently, reading verses into a microphone.