Five poems by Renata Morresi

[from "On Sale"]

The table

If you go down, if you turn, if you step on
one step, if you look out beyond the road’s
surface there's hardly anyone ever going by
please don't mind the inclination only cherish
the ideal diagonal niche ready for framing
the well-devised study and the window
on the shaft is the lesser evil if you find out
how to include the table, on a slant.


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Energy I

Starting from 20 meters underground
the temperature of the earth is constant
and doesn't depend on day or night.
Beyond 20 meters the temperature
rises by 1° C every 30
and a vertical geothermal heat pump
can penetrate and take this energy
forever unperturbed. Just drill.


*


Energy II

Then there is the so-called horizontal heat pump
which runs just a meter and a half beneath the soil
laying long winding knowing how
to use whatever changes passes by or deforms
like the water-soaked earth or the earth
hot with the heat of a season among many
no matter which as long as you employ
what is there, what’s already fragile.


*


Window

The bottom right window stays closed
the top right window always open
to let the light in the bathroom window
at top left is also open for the light
but the other window at bottom left
is also always closed.
Onto the street and the courtyard the windows
stay closed, the windows are open above.


*

Frank

I’ve lived here for five years
and for five years they’ve been calling:
is franky there I’d like to speak to frank
but didn’t frank tell you where you could
find him please help me find frank
have they transferred him? – how could I
know? how did you lose touch for five years?
who are you? where have you been so long?

[English translations by the Author]

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Renata Morresi is PhD in Comparative Literature and has a post-doctoral grant in Transnational American Literature. Since 2004 she has been teaching subjects related to American Studies at the University of Macerata, Italy. Her academic research focuses on the study of cross-cultural themes and questions arising from encounters across different languages and cultures. Her poetry deals with the opaque relationship between the singular and the many. Abstract lyricism, she calls it. She has just published her first collection of poetry, Cuore comune / Shared Heart (Pequod, 2010).