Chandra Livia Candiani 

trans. by Brian Robert Moore

Untitled

Man with the sleeping sands,
send me the wolf
that he might teach me to go
down the hall in our home
and carry me through to
the top of the dawn
without all the dizzying hours,
send me oh please
the ogre so he’ll gobble
me whole and not shovel mush
into me, wounding his fork with
red dew, or send me
the seven-league boots
and the seven flasks that turn
the surviving tears to treasure,
don’t send me please mommy
don’t send me I beg you daddy
not torturous sisters and brothers
but a pantry of warm dreams
and a key that slides quickly
into the keyhole of waking.

Chandra Livia Candiani is a celebrated Italian poet who has received awards including the Montale Prize and the Camaiore Prize. Her most recent collections are La domanda della sete (Einaudi, 2020) and Vista dalla luna (Salani, 2019). A teacher of Buddhist meditation and translator of Buddhist texts from English, Candiani explores the meditative process in her bestselling work of nonfiction, Il silenzio è cosa viva (Einaudi, 2018).

Brian Robert Moore is a literary translator originally from New York City. He previously worked in the Italian publishing industry, including as foreign fiction editor of the press Chiarelettere. He won the 2021 PEN Grant for the English Translation of Italian Literature for his translation of Lalla Romano’s A Silence Shared, and his translation of Meeting in Positano by Goliarda Sapienza will be published by Other Press in May 2021.