To keep (in memoriam)

I live the life
remembered by my great-grandmother.
In me, she loved and disappointed,
hung her bowels to dry in the wind,
swept the floor with her hair.
Her pleasures shook the dust off the settle,
she slept with my stock.
I, instead, will travel with suitcases full of her dreams
I will whisper in the ears
of her lovers,
I will bathe in the hot water
she craved for,
I will wash her face with hands
foaming with exquisite soap,
I will smear her legs with cream,
to hydrate them after these
one hundred years of life in the grave,
I will put on her nails
scarlet varnish
and I will go to bed with her ancestors.

The past will come and
will find me dead
with my hair scattered in the dust
and my toes painted red.
And glad, my God,
So glad.

From “Parole d’acqua – Palabras de agua” (Transl. water words) (Ibiskos editrice Risolo, Empoli, 2007)