MONDAY TRAVELS: POEMS BY ANTONIA POZZI

Happy Monday friends! Welcome to another edition of Monday Travels

So today we are in ITALY and we will explore:

MODESTY / THOUGHT /SCENT OF GREEN

 

Let's meet Antonia Pozzi

Antonia Pozzi (13 February 1912 – 3 December 1938) was an Italian poet. Antonia Pozzi’s poems were most recently published in the volumes Parole (Garzanti, 1998) and Poesia che mi guardi (Luca Sossella, 2010), and a collection of prose was published as Diari (Scheiwiller, 1988). Breath: Poems and Letters, a selection of Pozzi’s work translated into English by Lawrence Venuti, was published by Wesleyan University Press in 2002.
 On December 2, 1938, Antonia lay down in a field on the outskirts of Milan and swallowed poison. She died the following day, leaving behind diaries, notebooks and loose pages of poetry, documenting her 26-years of life.

Poem:

1. Modesty

If a word of mine
pleases you
and you tell me
even just with your eyes
I open wide
in a joyful smile –
but I tremble
like a young mother
who even blushes when
a passerby tells her
her little boy is handsome.

 2. Thought

To have two long wings
of shadow
and fold them up against your pain;
to be shadow, the peace
of evening
around your faded
smile.

 3. Scent of Green

Scent of green –
my lost childhood –
when I felt so proud
of my scuffed knees –
idly I pulled up
flowers, the grass alongside trails,
and threw it all aside –
it took up my hands –
scent of woods in August – at noon –
when, faces burning, we tore
through cobwebs –
fording streams, the stone skips
the foot plunges in
ice penetrates straight to the pulse –
the sun, the sun
on my bare neck –
light that bleaches your hair blonde –
scent of earth,
my lost childhood.

 
Thoughts:

Call Me By Your Name brought this remarkable young and troubled poet into my life and it just made me love this creation even more!

The poems Antonia wrote....I have too many thoughts and emotions to put in down into paper.

It's beautiful Antonia, your mind and soul were beautiful! I'm sad you didn't share your beauty more.


See you Next Monday!