Portrait with Snow
Light snow caresses you
and it falls twice; the snow
that used to fall also falls.
It was about time, that’s how it should be done:
in winter it snows!
Thus outside may it snow
thus inside may it be seen to snow.
Light snow caresses you
and it falls twice; the snow
that used to fall also falls.
You, protected by glass
from your winter garden–you died in winter–
solemn, you examine the snowy lacework
and from up close
(the way those of us who are nearsighted
take off our glasses to see better) up close
you examine its embroidery carefully, stitch
by stitch, and it seems the exam is passed;
no stitch of the snow is out of place,
nothing to undo.
Vivian Lamarque (born in 1946) is an Italian poet and translator, born Vivian Daisy Donata Provera Pellegrinelli Comba. She has translated La Fontaine, Valéry, Prévert, and Baudelaire and has written for the newspaper Corriere della Sera since 1992. Her first book of poetry, Teserino, won the Viareggio Prize for debut works in 1981, and she has won numerous prizes since. She has published eleven volumes of poetry and numerous short stories, and the majority of her poetry is collected in her Poesie 1972–2002 (Oscar Mondadori).
Sarah Stickney received her MFA from the University of New Hampshire. She is a former Fulbright Grantee for the translation of Italian poetry. The Guest in the Wood (Chelsea Editions: New York, 2013), her co-translations of Elisa Biagini’s selected poems, was awarded the Best Translated Book Award for Poetry in 2014 by the University of Rochester. She lives in Annapolis, MD, where she teaches at St. John’s College.
