Patrizia Cavalli | La primavera / The spring

You arrive like this, as always,

To spread the suspicion of paradise,

And before I open the window

I know you from the gentler light,

From the dust that hangs in the air,

From the bird’s obsessive performance,

Charles Courtney Curran | Summer, 1906

And if it weren’t the birds it would be something else,

For you have your specialties for every place;

And when you come in and I surrender my senses

I’m living in unfamiliar houses again and feeling nostalgia

For things that never occurred.

And across your labyrinths

You hand the continents and seasons on my back

And I become the wall of shouts and reflections

The platform flight’s take off from

Till the silent eddies of summer.

Heide Presse | Girl with red hair and floral daisy crown

Patrizia Cavalli | La primavera

Così arrivi, come sempre,

a spargere il sospetto del paradiso,

e prima ancora

di aprire la finestra

ti riconosco dalla luce più lenta

dai pulviscoli sospesi

e senza direzione

dalla replica ossessiva

degli uccelli,

e se non fossero gli uccelli

sarebbe un’altra cosa,

Arthur Hughes | Fair Rosamund, 1854 (detail)

per ogni posto

hai le tue specialità;

e quando entri

e ti lascio i miei sensi

riabito case sconosciute

e ho nostalgia

di cose mai avvenute.

Akseli Gallen-Kallela | Spring, 1902

E attraverso i tuoi labirinti

sospingi addosso a me

i continenti e le stagioni

e io divento la parete

degli urti e dei rimbalzi

l’appoggio dove

cominciano le fughe

fino al risucchio silenzioso

dell’estate

Philip Leslie Hale | The Crimson Rambler, 1908 | Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia

Patrizia Cavalli

Patrizia Cavalli (1947-2022) was an Italian poet.

Cavalli defended a thesis devoted to the aesthetics of music.

Although most of her work was poetic, she also translated the works of Molière and Shakespeare into Italian.

In 1968, she began living in Rome.

In 1999, she won the Viareggio Prize for poetry for her work Sempre aperto teatro.

In 2006, she received the Premio Dessì for Pigre divinità e pigra sorte.

In 2019, she was the recipient of the Premio Campiello for Con passi giapponesi.