My Voice

My voice has not the rumble of the sea

or acute echoes of those sounding between converging columns:

but the one of skirts rustling

while narrating feminine races.


I wanted to speak and not sing,

and say something of me, of many women

of whom many desires shake the sleepless

heart and leave hints of bitter on the lips.


Bitter is also my voice sometimes,

as a little irony laugh shivers in,

more stinging to who speaks than to who listens to.


As when you whisper some secrets to a girlfriend

some melancholic secret

and you fear she could make a laugh of it.



Amalia Guglielminetti (Italy 1881-1941), da Le Vergini Folli, Le Seduzioni, Damocle Ed. (Venezia), translation by Slow Words

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