from Opere (2014) [“Works”]
Translated from the Romanesco (Italian dialect)
by Marc Alan Di Martino
Cutthroat Urbs
To photoscratch this city with verses
violent mad kinetic cutthroat urbs
shooting us out like pinballs straight and crooked
no one has any clue where they’re headed
but headed there fast—
changing Rome unchanging all din & commotion,
humans like dogs wrangling over a bone
hands like ivy gripping the steering wheel
delinquent idiot pedal-to-the-metal
eternal river our Tiber running running
lovers to their beloveds clamoring
the clear resonance of time’s glass ringing
ancient echoes sing-songing ricocheting
the voice of the trees wind through the branches
the singers the choir flatulence of voices
heaven denuded of angels
and man a piece of shit, an evildoer,
a toilet the world the soul naught but a sewer.
Who Knows
Then
when the air freezes the eyes of cats
between dust and stone
you a nothing in the crowd
who knows
if one day, in the alembic of time,
while pouring coffee
to mind springs
nothing, nothing…?
Neighborhood
A language is a district
of cross streets, squares and buildings.
Over the smooth walls ivy
hoists its tall, arrogant sails.
A dialect is a neighborhood:
old houses, lanes draped with washing,
worksongs, the shouts of children playing.
All along the mottled, encrusted walls
sprouts a profusion of weeds and grasses.
The voice of stone
a speechless racket.
Dead of Night
Not long now before the shadow
of a verse falls
and dead of night mars the page.
A rooster clearing its throat is enough
for the whole thing
to go poof!:
syllables and stars.
An Old Bell
Again the raucous knell
of this lousy old bell
around the neck of boorish Rome.
Sky heavy with clouds:
youth like clouds dispersing.
Language too disintegrates
the same as travertine.
Each stone a vestige
of time’s temple
standing atop
the dust of history.
An Instant
Look at those swallows dart!
Stitching back-
and-forth
across the sky.
Just another instant
since the world’s inception.
Among debris strewn across the Forum
you and I
petrified—
ancients or humans of some future world?
Love by the Hour
Human destiny is water
and every destiny a freeloader
each of us trapped inside a shipwrecked skull,
the ocean
flooding through our eye sockets.
At night we fall asleep past
and in the morning wake up future
the past was arduous
saturated in hours
it’s pointless to stay here, Teresa,
like a heap of bones spending
small change on love
beneath the wan light
of this old abat-jour.
The Thorn
Can a flinty tongue
arouse the muse?
The thorn fancying itself the rose.
Mauro Marè (Rome, 1935-93) wrote in Romanesco, the dialect of the people of modern Rome. A notary by profession, he published six collections of poetry in his lifetime. His early work was deeply influenced by his predecessors Giuseppe Gioachino Belli, Trilussa and Mario dell’Arco. In his later work Marè developed an idiosyncratic, deeply personal language which has been compared to Joyce and Gadda for its bold, modernist experimentation. His work remains largely untranslated.
Marc Alan Di Martino’s books include Day Lasts Forever: Selected Poems of Mario dell’Arco (World Poetry Books, 2024—Winner of the 2026 Joseph Tusiani Italian Translation Prize), Love Poem with Pomegranate (Ghost City, 2023), Still Life with City (Pski’s Porch, 2022) and Unburial (Kelsay, 2019). His poems and translations appear in Apple Valley Review, Bad Lilies, The Shore and many other journals and anthologies. His work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Currently a reader for Baltimore Review, he lives in Italy.