A Poem For Sunday

Another selection from Patrizia Cavalli translated, from the Italian, by Moira Egan and Damiano Abeni:

I cannot love what you are, no,

what you are is indeed a mistake.

But there is in you a grace that surpasses

what you obstinately are.

Something that’s yours and doesn’t belong to you,

in you from the start but separate from you,

that draws towards you cautiously, afraid

of its own uncontainable splendor.

(From My Poems Won’t Change the World: Selected Poems of Patrizia Cavalli, edited by Gina Alhadeff. Translation © 2013 by Moira Egan and Damiano Abeni. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus & Giroux, LLC. All rights reserved. Photo by Joel Olives)