we are sprouts
in a spring morning
pollen scattered
by the Eastern wind
doomed to vanish into thin air
we lie down impalpable
in the pallet of life
By Floriana Ferro
Translated by the author
Poem from Floriana Ferro’s Dance of the Equinox, Smokestack Books, 2016.
Floriana Ferro was born in Sicily in 1982 and studied at the universities of Stanford, Paris and Catania. Her first novel Il viaggio di Sofia (2007) was shortlisted for the Arché international literary prize. She has also published a study of the French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas, Alterità e Infinito (2014). Danza di Equinozi was her first poetry collection, which won the Italian national literary prize Cardinal Branda Castiglioni in 2011. She lives in Udine, where she teaches philosophy and history in a Secondary school.
Photo by Lisa Kalloo
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Read previous poems in the Poetry Travels series:
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