Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin
The Morandi Bridge
Listen to Rita Castigli's Italian translation
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Let me lean my cheek against this limestone pillar –
I want to press until I feel the buzzing,
the sound the world makes when it isn’t going
anywhere, a purr of grey transparent wings
hovering in one place. A humming to itself
because it needs to lie still, stay quiet and
recover, and who will bring help?
The noise
when the bridge fell down in Genova – the road
you and I drove along slowly, heading east
behind a small Fiat, packed and weighed down
with people, cake and flowers for a mother-in-law
that made a Sunday lunch; they were taking their time –
it was lunchtime again each year when we reached the bridge,
and the families were always on the move,
so we’d drive along slowly, those fifteen minutes
high up over the factories and streets –
I would tell you this news if the stones of the world
could carry language, but after eight months, the shock
and the noise inside them still, they cannot move
or even allow a message to pass through.
April 19
italiano
listen to Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin reading 'For Niall Woods and Xenya Ostrovskaia'.