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Anna Ruchat “Notte del capricorno” and “Prima di tutto” |
Notte del capricorno
Night of the capricorn light
of reason wait
maybe I don’t know you
you drink lemonade
while passing
through the Gate of the Gods is the Year
of the Goat
an earth immobile receives
new verse
over your frozen face I see
tears of jade running
what is hope now
Life? Game?
be careful dancer on barbed wire
don’t deceive
sooner or later melts the ice of Uranus
or the sun of March
and in the valley of death
germinate the crocus
Prima di tutto
first always the children
with their bowls of blue milk
with their fragile wisdom
the children who need shoes
& hands & monotony
who dream our past
& watch
what they already know
& listen
to their story of tomorrow
first always the children
every night serving them the heavens
turning over the night wind
and listen again listen
first the children
and then
at the edge of the universe
in the ambiguity of the day
terrible angels & love without
return
Translated from the Italian by Stefan Hyner
Click here to read Italian versions of these poems
BIO: Anna Ruchat was born in Zurich in 1959. For twenty years, she worked for Italian publishing houses as a translator from the German. She translated mainly prose (Thomas Bernhard; the correspondence between Paul Celan and Nelly Sachs; Viktor Klemperer’s diaries 1933-1945; Kathrin Schmidt; and Norbert Gstrein, among others) and, in recent years, poetry (Stefan Hyner, Reidar Ekner, Philip Whalen). In 2002, with Giona Beltrametti and Stefan Hyner, she founded the Franco Beltrametti Foundation. She lives in Pavia with her two daughters.
German poet, translator & calligrapher Stefan Hyner studied Chinese & East-Asian Art History in Heidelberg, Germany & Taipei, Taiwan, & has travelled widely through China, Tibet, Japan & the Americas. His work has been translated into Italian, French, Swedish, Norwegian, English & Chinese. Since 1977 he has performed his work in many countries, often in collaboration with musicians & painters. He has taught poetry at the University of B in Norway & was guest lecturer at the Naropa Institute in Boulder & New College in San Francisco. Since 1987 hes been the editor of the poetry magazine GATE & since 1999 the literary executor of the Estate of the late Swiss poet Franco Beltrametti. Stefan Hyner has exhibited his calligraphy in various European cities, in solo & group exhibitions. He lives in Rohrhof, Germany, on the banks of the Rhine river, where he makes a living translating Buddhist literature & American poetry and working part time as a carpenter.