_Contemporary Man._ (Excerpts) Italian text (_Giorno dopo giorno_, _Day after day_, 1947) by Salvatore Quasimodo. Translation (c) Jake Spatz. =================================================== +1. Up in the willow branches.+ And to sing—and how could we sing with a foreign boot on our heart, and what with the dead abandoned in the squares on the ice-hard grass— how sing to the child’s accompaniment, the mourning bleat of it, how sing to the mother’s black shriek as she stumbled forward face ...

_Giorno dopo giorno_ / _Contemporary Man._ (Excerpts). Translation (c) Jake Spatz. *** +1. Alle fronde dei salici / Up in the willow branches.+ And to sing—and how could we sing with a foreign boot on our heart, and what with the dead abandoned in the squares on the ice-hard grass— how sing to the child’s accompaniment, the mourning bleat of it, how sing to the mother’s black shriek as she stumbled forward face to face with her son crucified up on a telegraph pole? Up in the willow branches, ...

There’s a rat in the ivory cellar. (c) Jake Spatz. This is the engine of the imagination where busted trumpets cry, stuffed cats close their eyes when you do, mannequins really court one another and swoon. Listen: the gong of a grandfather clock that was repossessed, now years ago, and lost; gaze at the shadows, brilliant, plush, and dark there in the full-length pleats of a corduroy dress. Smell the aromas of spring all over your face, take in a sky with the color of wheat; walk with an armf...

EARLY TO BED. (c) Jake Spatz "Live as though it were morning," goes the saying, and you know it means beginnings are your friends, and sounds like something really worth obeying, whose promise might be kept, and keep repaying the investment of your time, with dividends; but it’s almost morning now: you lie and stare, as you have for hours; you know each crack in the ceiling like the back of your hand, and read your fortune there: the freakish nerves, the wide sheet of despair, that caught-ben...