Antonella Anedda: Five Poems
Poesia nel una scatola, "Poem in a Box", 2022
After Yehuyda Amichai, for Ivan
How true, in Isaac's story
the true hero is the ram lamb who dies
without knowing the world's intrigues
and how true too
that his only friend
was is the shrub.
Italian poet Antonella Anedda's lyrical clarity, courage and originality make her the most significant voice of her generation. Emerging from the Winter Sea, a bi-lingual selection of her poetry and prose (1989-2021), is forthcoming in 2026 with Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Like certain winds from her ancestral Sardinia, Anedda includes the reader as she unsettles perspectives on war, nature, identity and art. For Arrowsmith, her translator Wallis Wilde-Menozzi has selected five poems, four from Notti di pace occidentale, Nights of western peace, (1999) and one unpublished example of the many ways her language revitalizes truth. The four poems, which are untitled or parts of different series, are identified by the first few words of the poem. The translations are presented with permission of the publisher in anticipation of the 2026 publication, and cannot be reproduced without the publisher's permission.
No place exists
to F
No place exists that needs us
in another month the year
will have a Baltic number, white
1991
where the one thousand retreats
to centuries-steppes
and the one, hollow,
jingles.
No one has called us
those were voices from the vegetable garden, whistles
to drive the birds off,
the little rain that drips
from pipes in the house
deserted
like paper.
There are only breaths
and the fogged basin
and the walnuts that say:
“autumn multiplied around tables
stones on empty places.”
No time has needed us
vertical nights
and the avenue with lindens, the hare
hidden in the bushes
the shadow on the back of the person then standing still
now blow wearily
at the century’s temples.
There’s an evening meal, lightning
in the snapshots slipped down in frames
and we drink among the tarnished forks
faces tight to the glasses
because slow fear affects
even the elbow that’s hanging a garland.
No time needs us
no one says
the number of blows
the exact number of blades of grass
nor how the air
lashing us
will toughen our skins—
squirrels.
The slippage of leaves
The distance of the constellations
I don’t have dark words
not dark enough.
The pine digs itself into the night
I hardly have a memory of it.
Off to the side there was something like an enclosure
and there things lasted.
Rome, December 1990
Neither burning nor cold.
Neither burning nor cold. We’re standing in front of the shop windows with the large wild boar’s eyes half closed and newsprint with photos of the dead wrapping eggs. Today there is still someone shielding food with a hand and breathing has only one sound, the anguish of a thin string that beats on the geraniums.
This is the kitchen at seven
this the wrist immersed in the sink
and the dark on the balcony that describes
the distance from day.
I wait for you to warm your milk
I follow the frost on the iron balcony railing
and the woman who drags her bag in the wind.
With a fingernail I design a star
in the steam on the window
for the feet, for the wrists far off
that they won’t tumble uncovered into ditches.
Everything is lost
everything is launched far away.
The world turns to dust
in that sand the condemned see
before hitting it with the back of their heads.
Once again convoys in the east, tree trunks
that break the wheels at borders
again, people in lines
with stones in their pockets against the wind.
Simple thuds, shouts
like a dawn hunt
and nailed in the woods
the lists of the fallen.
Light and light
burns alongside this earthly fever.
Far off—between the broken gates—
someone picks up a cup.
The city shrinks in the lightning of nearing rain.
If I’ve written
If I’ve written it’s with concern
because I was worried about life
the happy people
caught in evenings’ shadows
that by evening suddenly fell on them from behind.
I wrote for the mercy of nightfall
for every creature who steps back
with their spine pressed against a railing
waiting for the sea—without sound—unending.
Write, I say to myself
and I write in the first person to go forward more alone into the mystery
because others’ eyes alarm me
mine is the silence of footsteps, mine the deserted light
of the heath—
on the ground of the city boulevard.
Write it because nothing is defended and the word woods
trembles more fragile than the woods, without branches or birds,
because only courage can excavate
patience above ground
until it lifts weight
from the black weight of the field.
If it were nothing more
on the death of A.R.
If it were nothing more than this: to reach a place
pronounce its name exactly to be at home.
Happy winter now the new winter is over
from a beginning that for us is still unnamed
not different perhaps from the summer breach in a fence,
maybe a circle of pale lights.
Surrounding you only plants
you wouldn’t have had a chance to avoid
water blown on the rocks—hail that we’ll never know
if it landed with the sound it made on the roof tiles there in your time
on the white, human cleanliness of bathrooms.
Until now only clipped footsteps
that you, perhaps, hear in ardent silence
and air around the orange trees slowly moved by people.
You see here for the first time nothing is lost.
This morning they compacted the cold soil—
filled up with the joy of water
it forgot for you
the bar on your chair, your neck twisted back
the wind in the courtyard.
Night is so happy now that it’s night again
and it’s not true that ice stays
and slowly worry lessens
maybe a snap instead hatches something high up
very high,
a note
past the beak, past the shiny eyes of a bird
a sliver of hill—which there below
clasped the green bronze roof of the church.
Happy night to you
forever without the abyss, a steppe of the subjugated soul,
where the olive tree bends without sound
Jerusalem of quiet
of quiet and the trunk that circles and engraves death
that pulls it into the void and tosses it there
and slowly gnaws it.
I have no voice, nor song
but a language woven with straw
a language of rope and salt clenched in a fist
and fitted tight in every crack
in the house gate that bangs against the hard tumulus of dawn
from dark to dark
for whoever remains
for whoever keeps turning.
Amelia Rosselli, Italian poet and musicologist, 1930-1996, died by suicide.
Antonella Anedda lives in Rome and has roots in her family’s native Sardinia. Her thirteen books of poetry and prose have been awarded Italy’s most important prizes, including the Premi Viareggio, Eugenio Montale, and Umberto Saba. She also received the John Florio Prize for Archipelago, and the Derek Walcott prize for Historiae, both of which were translated into English. Emerging from the Winter Sea: Selected Poems and Prose (1989-2021) is forthcoming with FSG in 2026.
Wallis Wilde-Menozzi lives in Parma, Italy. An American, transplanted to Italy nearly fifty years ago, she has published five books of memoir, poetry, fiction and essays, most recently Silence and Silences (FSG, 2022). A poet by inclination, the gift of living in two countries freed her to understand language and narration differently. FSG reissued, after its publication twenty years earlier, Mother Tongue, An American Life in Italy, with a new introduction by Patricia Hampl.