647 | MEN | MARIA NIVEA ZAGARELLA, Sicily

MEN

The resigned sea gives back
the dead,
excessive straw,
useless,
upon this earth.
Crazy and lost
the desperate adults
depart,
the innocent little ones
can do nothing,
their little hands
frozen by the cold night
that brings them death.
Murderous men
against their own flesh,
murderous against the earth
that breast fed them since birth.
The sea no longer has
enough straw baskets
to collect drop after drop,
woes and laments
of these drowning bodies
MARIA NIVEA ZAGARELLA (Sicily)

“The Poetry of Maria Nivea Zagarella”, Bilingual Sicilian-English, Mineola, NY: Legas, 2017.

Translated from the Sicilian by Gaetano Cipolla