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

Broccoli Woman Hunger

Thick broccoli saucepan
filled with salted water,
the violet flame rises rises
reddish tongue stirred
by a mischievous wind,
the saucepan sputters around the neck.
The woman comes and goes
in the cramped house,
with a small window facing the sea
and the scent of the sea mixing
with the frothy smell of broccoli,
lost adrift trapped
in the smoke-blackened saucepan.
Hunger rises with the flame,
the one white the other yellow.
Spent, the belly won’t give up,
spent, the eyes dart here and there.
The woman throws more water in,
the broccoli get thicker and thicker.
Time has to go by
for the hunger to subside.