ELISABETTA BAGLI

ELISABETTA BAGLI

GARBATELLA*

I feel how different the air is,

My deserted reality,

Alive within me.

I get close.

Again I see my streets,

My squares and places,

My gardens.

The smell of my people reaches me.

The burning summer sun

Wilts the hydrangeas,

The Bougainvillea,

My life.

I resist the heat in silence.

I want to plunge again

Into the fragrance of freshly baked bread,

Into the smell of lasagne

That on goes through the streets on Sundays

From my neighborhood,

I want to hear the toll of those bells

Screaming life,

And announcing death.

I walk and I smile.

Under my steps

Clusters of dry summer leaves,

They crackle like memories

From my past.

The sound of the wind in the trees,

It sounds as far as my cries of joy,

Of pain,

As my sad reveries

About those loves I never had,

Forever lost in my fantasy.

I walk and I listen.

To the song of the cicadas,

Unnoticed music

Of my summers,

The voices of children giving

The color of life to the grass, the asphalt, the lotti*,

The comings and goings in the market

Shaking the air in which

Everything has a reason.

A unique island of everydayness and fantasy.

I walk and I observe.

The small, ancient, modern houses,

Each with its own history,

Its soul, its life.

The clothes hanging over the yards,

The fountains giving fresh water,

The flowers and pines of Rome,

So harmonious, so vigorous, so unique

In their ascension to the sky

Like the sweet symphonies of Respighi.

The years have passed,

My Garbatella.

I have changed,

I walk across your heart

And remember who I am.

* Garbatella was founded in the late 1920s. The older section of the area is divided into project units (lotti), each of them (lotto) made of several buildings grouped together around a common yard. This design was inspired by the Garden city movement. This kind of architectural agglomeration in Rococo style consists of a common garden area which serves as an informal meeting point for all the families that live in the lotto.

HANDS

A new feeling,

Hands in the night

And fingers glistening,

Clutching the future

Of cross-cutting destinies.

Vivid hands desiring one another,

Unsuspecting eyes smiling

At the new life,

Seeking comfort,

Unfolding in the world.

The groove of each sorrow

Is in the wrinkles of the skin

Announcing

The abandonment of hands

That support each other

Beyond eternity.

THE BLOOD OF THE SUN

In its place, this morning,

The sun was not shining,

There was instead the proud deception

Of a buried feeling,

Without crumbs

To feed languid birds.

The scale has weighed

All my love

And yet it is not enough.

With difficulty I start to fly

Scarred by your offenses.

ELISABETTA BAGLI

ELISABETTA BAGLI was born in Rome in 1970 and lives in Madrid since 2002. She won a degree in Economy and Commerce at the Universitá degli Studi "La Sapienza" in Rome. Having worked as a teacher of Italian as a foreign language at the Booklane Language Academy in Madrid, she now works privately as a teacher of Italian, translator and freelance editor. She is Cultural Ambassador of Universum Academy Switzerland in Spain. She writes poems, short stories and fairy tales. Her poems have been translated into Spanish, English, French, Albanian, Serbian and Greek.  She has worked as director of two editorial collections and as interpreter for Italian writers Paolo Giordano, Elisabetta Flumeri, Gabriella Giacometti and Diego Galdino. She was Vice President of Il Mondo dello Scrittore Association (The Writer’s World Association) of Faenza and Honorary Member of L’Oceano nell’anima Association (The Ocean in the Soul) of Bari. She started writing poems and short stories in 2009 and published her first collection of poems, “Voce” (“Voice”), in 2011. An extended collection with more poems was republished in 2015 by EEE. She has taken part in a number of literary contests and she has won several awards, plaques and certificates in various Poetry Prize Contests.  Her books are “Voce” (“Voice”, with its double version in Italian by EEE and in Spanish “Voz” by Ediciones Vitruvio), “Dietro lo sguardo” (“Behind the Gaze”), “Mina, la fatina del lago di cristallo” (“Mina, the Little Fairy of the Crystal Lake”) and “Specchi” (Mirrors). She works together with artists involved in Generando Arte - Colectivo with her poems in Spanish, inspired by their works on gender violence. In September 2014 three of her poems became part of an UNESCO publication related to the international contest “Culture, Power and Violence: STORIES OF WOMEN OF ALL AGES AND COUNTRIES”. Her poems have been selected for a number of anthologies in several Countries. She actively contributes reviews and interviews to different blogs, among which the network The Writer’s World. She writes for magazines such as the Spanish Digital Magazine of Art and Culture “Letras de Parnaso” and “Proverso” publishing articles in Spanish. She organized The International Literary Festival “Palabra en el Mundo” in May 2016 and May 2017 in Madrid. She also organized, together with the Italian Chamber of Commerce, a child theater lab based on her fairy tale “Mina, la fatina del Lago di Cristallo”, in Passione Italia Festival in Madrid in 2016 and in 2017. She organizes literary presentations in Spain (Madrid and Barcelona) and in Italy, and literary contests for the Universum Academy Switzerland and for all the Associations of which she is a member. In May 2017, she was awarded a Diploma of Honor for Artistic Merit Mayte Spínola by the Group Pro Arte y Cultura (ex aequo with Rosa Gallego del Peso) for her poem BNR, inspired in the artwork Cruel Realidad, by Rosa Gallego. All her books were present in the Book Salon of Torino 2014-2015-2016 and in the Book Fair of Madrid 2014-2015-2016. She keeps her personal blog Elisabetta Bagli (http://baglielisabetta.altervista.org/) and her promotional blog is Voci letterarie e non solo (Literary Voices and More) (http://vociletterarie.altervista.org/). Country of origin: Italy     Mother language: Italian. Nationality: Italian.  Place of living: Madrid (Spain).