Andrea Inglese

from THE BIG DUCK

translated from Italian by Johanna Bishop

What to me looks like a duck
could perhaps be the clarity of death

the death of everybody else
and mine too but with this
tiny crucial time lag
as if I died a second later
which means entering the duck
the long twisting guts of spacetime
in search of a quiet nook
where I can rest my weary limbs

what you see here fixed in place so perfectly
as if in the finest insulating wax
is simply people who are dead
and thus immensely calm
with no haste and no recriminations

(the dome is solid vaguely ogival
just barely scented
and the yielding floor
just barely undulated)

I wander on a little longer
I even pick some flowers (sea daffodils)
on the inside the big duck
(for the moment) is in bloom

ANDREA INGLESE is a poet, essayist, novelist, and translator from Milan, now based in Paris. He has published seven poetry collections, been translated into several languages, and won the Bridge Book Award in 2017 for his novel Parigi è un desiderio. He is also among the founders of the Italian literary blog Nazione Indiana.

JOHANNA BISHOP is a translator from Italian with a particular interest in the overlap between literature and the visual arts. Recent books include Tamam Shud by Alex Cecchetti, Oh mio cagnetto by Diego Marcon, and the chapbook Fossils by Maria Grazia Calandrone.