For the second week of our new Saturday column, In This Together, we present a recent poem from Italian writer Mariangela Gualtieri, newly translated by Anna Aresi and Sarah Moore. Below, Aresi explains the context of Gualtieri’s work and how the poem came to be such an instant success in Italy:
The first case of COVID-19 in Italy was diagnosed on February 21, just days before the Carnival parades and celebrations were scheduled to take place. Everything was immediately canceled and schools were closed, at first only in the most affected regions, until on March 9, Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte issued the decree that would bring the entire country into total lockdown. The same day, Mariangela Gualtieri published her poem “Nove marzo duemilaventi” (“March ninth, twenty-twenty”). Within hours, the poem had been shared thousands of times on social media and in messaging apps, effectively becoming the text of the Italian quarantine.
Mariangela Gualtieri is a beloved Italian poet and cofounder of the Teatro Valdoca theater company in Cesena. The company has performed poems and works by major Italian authors, and Gualtieri herself is known for the masterful interpretations of her own works. She read this poem for a local TV channel exactly a month after its publication, on April 9; the recording can be found here (Italian only).
With more time on their hands and prompted by a sense of social responsibility, authors have been prolific during the lockdown, sharing reflections, diaries, and other kinds of writing, often to raise funds for hospitals and other organizations. Only in the months and years to come will we find out what pieces will stand the test of time, but even now we can be sure that this poem is here to stay. Though prompted by an unprecedented state of emergency, Gualtieri’s poem does not read rushed; on the contrary, it is a thought-out, compelling reflection on our (unsustainable) way of life in relation to the environment. Much like Dante’s Commedia, mutatis mutandis of course, the poem establishes a relation between the human microcosm and the universal macrocosm, inviting readers to reconsider our position as both individuals and as a species in relation to the universe.
As a final note on the translation, I should add that a first English translation, by Lucy Rand and Clarissa Botsford, appeared soon after the poem’s release. Rand and Botsford stated that they “deliberately chose to stick very closely to the Italian structure so that readers who do not know Italian can read the original in parallel and appreciate the language to the full.” With the poet’s permission, Sarah Moore and I took a different approach, seeking to provide Asymptote’s readers with an English rendering that also conveys the rhythm, bold syntactical choices, and flow of images of the original.
March ninth, twenty-twenty
by Mariangela Gualtieri
I want to tell you this
we needed to stop.
We knew. We all felt
how our actions
were too frantic. Staying inside of things.
Each outside of ourselves.
Squeezing each hour—making it count.
We needed to stop
and we couldn’t.
It had to be done together.
Slow down the pace.
But we couldn’t.
There was no human strain
that could hold us back.
And since this,
like an unconscious will,
was a shared, unspoken desire—
perhaps our species has obeyed,
undone the chains that keep
our seed armored. Opened up
the most secret cracks
and let it come in.
Perhaps that’s why it later made a species
leap—from the bat to us.
Something within us had to be opened.
Perhaps, I don’t know.
Now we’re at home.
What’s happening is momentous.
And there is gold, I believe, in this strange time.
Perhaps there are gifts.
Nuggets of gold for us. If we help one another.
There’s an urgent call
of our species now and as a species today
we must each think ourselves. A shared destiny
keeps us here. We knew this. But not too well.
Either all of us, or none.
The earth is powerful. Truly alive.
I can feel her thinking a thought
we’re not aware of.
And what about this situation? Let us consider
whether she’s not the one moving.
Whether the law that rightly guides
the entire universe, whether what’s happening, I wonder,
isn’t the fullest expression of that law
that guides us too—just like
every star—every particle of the cosmos.
Whether dark matter were this
holding everything as one inside an ardor
of life, with death the sweeper that comes
to balance each species.
Keep it within its measure, in its place,
guided. We’re not the ones
who made the skies.
An imposing voice, now wordlessly
tells us to stay home, like children
who’ve misbehaved, without knowing how,
and who won’t receive kisses, won’t be embraced.
Each one inside a braking
that drags us back, perhaps to the slowness
of ancient ancestors, of mothers.
Watching the skies more closely,
tinging a dead man ochre. For the first time, baking
bread. Watching a face intently. Softly, softly,
singing a child to sleep. For the first time
shaking hands with another hand
feeling the bond with full force. That we are together.
A single organism. We bear all the species
within us. Within us, we save it.
To that grasp
of a palm in another’s palm
to that simple act, forbidden to us now—
we will return with widened insight.
We’ll be here, more attentive, I think. Our hand,
more sensitive, will stay inside the act of living.
Now we know how sad it is
to stay one metre apart.
Translated from the Italian by Anna Aresi and Sarah Moore
This text was originally published in Italian by Doppiozero
Interested in submitting work to this Feature? We’re looking for literature in translation—specifically fiction, nonfiction, and poetry—that addresses the current pandemic. Send work under 2,500 words directly to blog@asymptotejournal.com. General submission guidelines apply.
Mariangela Gualtieri is a poet and playwright who, together with Cesare Ronconi, founded the Teatro Valdoca in 1983. Her poetry collections include Bestia di gioia (Beast of Joy, Einaudi, 2010) Le giovani parole (The Young Words, Einaudi, 2015,) and, most recently, Quando non morivo (When I Didn’t Die, Einaudi, 2019). A selection of her poems is available in English translation in Beast of Joy (Chelsea Editions, 2018).
Anna Aresi is a translator and teacher based in the United States. Her Italian translations include texts by Carol Aymar Armstrong, Ilya Kaminsky, and Forrest Gander, among others, as well as a full-length translation of Ewa Chrusciel’s Contraband of Hoopoe (Contrabbando di upupe, Edizioni Ensemble, 2019). She is a copy editor at Asymptote.
Sarah Moore is a bookseller, editor, and translator from Cambridge, UK. She currently lives in Paris and is an Assistant Blog Editor for Asymptote.
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