Dialect Poetry of Southern Italy (Italian Poetry in Translation Book 2)

My Father’s Ties

So many ties laid out, tassels and bows
all made of cotton, of light wool or silk,
rose-colored, deep blue or red and black,
hanging inside the closet in neat rows.
Mount Vesuvius’s plume of smoke, and the sea
of Margellina on a picture landscape,
then a bridge and a river on a crease
underneath the Pope wearing his skullcap.
At every knot upon those colored neckties
my father’s hands blossomed into flowers,
at every knot upon those colored neckties
in the brightly-lit room before the mirror
those hands played music on an instrument.
Now all those neckties with so many colors
seem instruments that lie bereft of sound.
(Translated by Luigi Bonaffini)