from “La Città Fantasma” [“Ghost City”]
in La Casa Vuota (2021) [“The Empty House”]
Translated from the Italian by V. Penelope Pelizzon
Memorial to the Fallen
The monument is like new. Imposing
in its granite, it soars above shrubs
and grass blades. If the space around it bewilders,
paved with stones already grown over with green,
the obelisk watches all from on high.
It’s almost a pity that memory is illegible, today
bereft of interest. A shame not to hear
schoolkids on an outing: “Fallen or tripped?”
It’s especially pitiful that these MARTYRS
don’t know much more: when, or why,
or for whom. And if, truly, they have fallen.
Carpenter’s Shop
The tree’s scent has vanished, gone
through the window with sounds of the lathe.
I recognize the saw, the hammer, the file
beneath the sawdust. Earlier in the street,
it seemed like no one had ever heard a voice
or a word: only the radio and its little tunes.
On the dark shelf, next to a painting
without color, there waits still to be given away
a final wooden flower.
Main Street
After so much noise, you don’t hear anything else
from this street extending endlessly.
The strip of buildings pauses for small vacant lots
or signposted arteries, then the houses continue
with abandoned gardens, swing sets,
lapsed commercial and leisure spots.
Dizzying heights of industry, power,
monuments. Out back, the dumpsters are squats
for magpies and crows divvying up
the trash.
I can ask, shouting: where is
everyone? But the answer’s here. You’re all here
and you’re not here. The years rewind to baffle you
with a few images.
Post Office
Exhausted pavement leads us
to the windows. Plastic and plywood
sag slowly, as if giving in
to removal. A nearby silhouette
laughs into the emptiness with too many teeth.
Out back, among sacks and carts,
two envelopes that never departed still wander
near an old postcard’s sea.
“Here everything’s beautiful. Thinking of you.
We’ll be back soon.”
Bakery
Sometimes at night, we’d knock at the frame
of the only lit window. Small change
for a hot sandwich, and then: “To hell with you,
scram!” Inside, we’d glimpse baking pans
and that mechanical mixer they used to say
sucked the arms off the apprentices.
Now the machine’s fallen,
smashed in two, but flour still rises
and settles continuously at each tremor,
breeze, tremble of the leaves.
It sifts into the footsteps
of whoever passes by.
Shooting Range
After the poles fluttering with rags,
past the desolate sign
for local beer, you need only cast your eyes
beyond the entrance to see targets
triumphant in the middle of the grass.
In a place of old detonations,
a warped wind
reverberates like a testament.
School
For a little while, in a ground floor
classroom, there lived a jittery homeless man
everyone called “the professor.”
Alone and angry, he collected beer cans.
Authorities had blocked the entrance
and windows due to RISK OF SUBSIDENCE.
Meanwhile, graffiti and wall-scrawlings make a backdrop
for strange animals: ashy mice and birds
who return, scurrying, surviving in the dark
Shopping Center
Crumbling, the ceiling has crushed and covered
nearly everything. Only the outside walls and gratings
linger in place, blocking
access. Someone’s tried to get in,
but there’s really not much to hock: cables,
rubble, metal debris. Objects
have vanished. The toy pistols quit
their killing, buried with the silenced
dolls, cell phones, accessories. It’s the rusting iron,
now, that’s most gaudily colored.
Station
The tracks are hidden by extravagant
plants: shrubs birthed among stones,
twisted flowers, seedlings of poplars and birch.
On the platform, only ants.
In the waiting room, without a strap,
there’s a suitcase open and half-empty
with a tee shirt, underwear, and a stained book
boasting on its cover LEADERSHIP
AND MANAGEMENT. Just above,
the timetable goes on signaling
the delay of trains that will not come.
Church ATTENTION: DANGER OF COLLAPSE CONTROLLED ACCESS ZONE, NO UNAUTHORIZED PERSONNEL. MANAGEMENT IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY DAMAGES, HOWEVER SEVERE, TO PERSONS OR THINGS.
The Empty House I came back to get the keys, slipped between the couch cushions, behind the doily worked in crochet. Until a few years ago I would have knocked: is anyone here? This morning I know the answer. The dust is thicker on carpets and furniture, my steps unsteady. I came back to get the keys, and I’m alone between smoke-dark walls. The doors have quit banging. This time, my brother isn’t hiding in the shoe cubby among jackets still chilly with wind. And I don’t run to find him. I just came back for the keys, quickly pocketed. No lights in the kitchen or pantry. The balcony, through the dim glass, hangs suspended, heedlessly watching the oncoming March. Other flowers wait for it. I just came back for the keys. Is anyone here?
Late-night postcard #3
Descending the lit stairs beside
a mute, untended parking lot,
the black sky askew.
No one’s dreaming tonight; there’s just a slow
well-known exhaustion, shadows
dragging between feet and ground
in the dry wind.
“We’re alive,”
I wrote to you years ago on arriving home.
Now, truly, when things appear to me
obscure, with my clumsy dregs of trust
and fatigue, I feel that message’s echo
like an imperative.
Yari Bernasconi (b. 1982) lives in Bern, Switzerland. His first full-length collection, Nuovi Giorni di Polvere (New Days of Dust), won both the 2016 Premio Terra Nova and the Premio Castello di Villalta Giovani. His most recent book, La Casa Vuota (The Empty House), received the 2022 Swiss Literature Prize.
V. Penelope Pelizzon’s translations have appeared in Poetry, Asymptote, and The FSG Book of Twentieth Century Italian Poetry. Her last book of original poems was named a 2024 TLS book of the year.
World Poetry Review 