Dear Friend in Romania, thank you for telling me how you located my poem "Translate," via italianamericanwriters.com/Fortunato.html "Translate" is one of my favorite poems, but not one I revisit often. So this has been a welcome reunion, poet and poem. It's also a delight to hear that you have included it in your undergraduate paper on English/Italian writers in the United States.

The " blue-eyed one" in the poem is a friend who like me was studying Italian. That's why I included the litanies of Italian words, to suggest our effort to learn the language, and free ourselves from fear about all kinds of other things, notably about our potential power to change or  "speak in our key."

"Key" here is first a musical key--I was urging us to make our own music, not play the tired old tunes of repression. But key also unlocked parts of ourselves that were repressed or denied by the dominant, male culture. Some of this language sounds outdated now that feminism, in its many guises, has helped alter attitudes in the U.S. But when I wrote this poem in the 1980s, feminism in the U.S. was only beginning to take hold. Revolution of this kind takes a long time.

The poem was written during the years I was in my first marriage when I was attempting to break free of certain gender restrictions on action, speech, achievement, enjoyment, mistakes. Caution and constraint can be extremely limiting, and during this period of my life, it was my connection to other women who were mothers like me and also trying to claim their own emotions, ideas,and power to act--as I say, only through my connection to other women did I grow to trust myself and take leaps into independence. Those leaps were painful and jarring and, like my divorce, led to breakage.

For students and young woman today, I suspect such restraints are not so limiting, but that surely depends on place and culture. When I teach immigrant young women, especially those from Asian and African countries, I find them hampered by uncertainty as to how to voice their own ideas. Some of this hesitation is undoubtedly related to their general uncertainty as immigrants.

I do want to talk to you and ask you questions about your town or city, your studies and about your country. Am I right that there are many Italian-speaking people in Romania?

Before we set a time to call, please tell me what town you live in, so I can look it up on a map.

Also sketch in a little about yourself--age, activities, family, neighborhood, interests, talents, etc. I'm very curious to know you better.

When you think of me, think of a medium-sized woman, in a medium-sized city, with tree-lined streets, and one of the largest American rivers, the Mississippi, flowing through its downtown. That is Saint Paul, the capital of Minnesota. It is a lovely city with a beautiful, serene cathedral where I often stop simply to find my spirit rise into its welcoming dome and hover with the circle of soldier-saints, my favorite of which is clothed in green.

What soldier saints are doing in a Midwestern American cathedral probably has to do with the spiritual battles we all must fight, no matter what belief system we embrace. But those soldiers also link us to early days when Minnesota was a rough territory, populated by hardy settlers who could survive sub-zero (centigrade) winters and baking hot summers, with a few plagues of locusts thrown in. Minnesota also has a substantial population of Native Americans, some of whom have enough money via casinos, and some of whom do not.

Now I'm going to include the poem you're writing about, "Translate," for the simply joy of experiencing it again.

With all best wishes, Margot

 
TRANSLATE

1.
We played like children
scales on the keyboard
practicing Italian
subjunctives and dreams,
missing the flats
F sharp in G major,
the difficult plurals
da capo, staccato.
You told about failure,
long legs on the pedals,
you spoke in Italian;
long hair down your back.

2.
I have lived with husband,
marito, marito
who married again,
sposato, espoused
a woman he knew
prima, prima
he began making a garden
giardino, unsown.
I have painted the walls,
muri, muri
I have painted the walls,
grigio, grey.

3.
Last night we talked
without looking down,
your blue eyes sharp,
you played all the notes,
you spoke in our language,
you said it in English,
I learn to be single.

4.
Not lost in the courtyard
perdito, perso
chasing the sky
cielo, cielo
tramps in the garden
giardino, giardino
with outstretched hands
mano, mani
No longer the girl
stumbling, running
who could never be good
buona, bene
followed by tramps
with pockets bulging
followed by tramps
with misplayed scales.

5.
No! I hear you
in the language itself
pull the egg
from the snake's mouth,
pull words from the son,
frame daughter's slammed door.
I hear you, amica,
understand all the notes,
speak in our key.

 
From THE ANNUNCIATION, Copyright © 2001 by Margot Fortunato Galt. All rights reserved.