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Tenement Press is an occasional publisher of esoteric,
accidental, angular, & interdisciplinary literatures.
‘My head is my only house unless it rains’
Don Glen Vliet
Tenement Press is an occasional publisher of esoteric,
accidental, angular, & interdisciplinary literatures.
‘My head is my only house unless it rains’
Don Glen Vliet
‘Were a wind to arise
I could put up a sail
Were there no sail
![]()
I’d make one of canvas and sticks’
Bertolt Brecht, ‘Motto’
(Bucknow Elegies)
I could put up a sail
Were there no sail
Bertolt Brecht, ‘Motto’
(Bucknow Elegies)
Rehearsal / 15. Elsa Morante
Translated from the Italian by Cristina Viti
![]()
Translated from the Italian by Cristina Viti
TO P.P.P. IN NO PLACE
And so
—as the saying goes—you’ve cut loose.
In actual fact, you were—as the saying goes—a misfit
& came to terms with it in the end
even though you’d always been that: A Misfit.
The old pitied you behind your back
even as they requested your signature
on their pronouncements
& the ‘young’ spat in your face
because they were fascists like their dads
(that’s right, you did tell them, except
you were wrong on one count:
these are worse fascists than their dads)
they spat in your face, but of course they too
requested your propaganda for their leaflets
& your money for their little football teams.
And you never said no, you always gave yourself
& gave yourself out.
And even as they took—‘Oh, he gives,’
they whispered in their gossip,
‘he gives out of his self-love.’ Long, long live
those who love themselves & love others as themselves.
Those guys hate others as they hate themselves
& may even believe
they’re building a revolution on such justice.
They slated you for your otherness
(by which they meant homosexuality)
since they use the bodies of females
as they please. Free to use them as they please.
The bodies of females are staple flesh
but the bodies of males demand respect.
No doubt about it!
That’s their morality. If some little street girl
had murdered one of their lot
they wouldn’t cite her immaturity to absolve her.
But in truth in truth in truth
your real otherness
was not what even you thought made you other.
Your real otherness was poetry.
That’s the ultimate reason for their hatred
for poets are the salt of the earth
but they like their earth insipid.
In actual fact, they are innatural
& you are nature: Poetry—that is, nature.
•
And so, you’ve now cut loose.
You no longer care for reading the news
—your morning prayer—with the government
& currency in free fall
& idiot decrees whether large or small
& the laws & Real Big Laws. I hope
that one last earthly grace is left to you—for this short time:
the grace of smile & laughter. That from where you are now
but won’t stay long, from that other side, the No Place
you’re now passing through
you’ll smile & laugh at their profits & speculations & income
accumulations
embezzlements tax dodgings
& careers etc. That you’ll smile & laugh at that for a moment
before you return
to Paradise.
You were poor
& drove an Alfa like the poor do
to show off with your compatriots the poor,
provincial in your nice little latest-fashion outfits
like kids when they act richer than everyone else
out of their need to be loved by everyone else.
That’s what you really yearned for: to be like everyone else,
except no: you were OTHER—and why?
Because you were a poet.
And that’s why they won’t forgive you: you are a poet.
But you can laugh [at them].
Leave them with their newspapers & mass mija
& go off with your lonely poems
to Paradise.
Offer your book of poems to the gatekeeper of Paradise
& see how the golden door
falls open for you
Pierpaolo, my friend
(Rome, 13 February 1976)
And so
—as the saying goes—you’ve cut loose.
In actual fact, you were—as the saying goes—a misfit
& came to terms with it in the end
even though you’d always been that: A Misfit.
The old pitied you behind your back
even as they requested your signature
on their pronouncements
& the ‘young’ spat in your face
because they were fascists like their dads
(that’s right, you did tell them, except
you were wrong on one count:
these are worse fascists than their dads)
they spat in your face, but of course they too
requested your propaganda for their leaflets
& your money for their little football teams.
And you never said no, you always gave yourself
& gave yourself out.
And even as they took—‘Oh, he gives,’
they whispered in their gossip,
‘he gives out of his self-love.’ Long, long live
those who love themselves & love others as themselves.
Those guys hate others as they hate themselves
& may even believe
they’re building a revolution on such justice.
They slated you for your otherness
(by which they meant homosexuality)
since they use the bodies of females
as they please. Free to use them as they please.
The bodies of females are staple flesh
but the bodies of males demand respect.
No doubt about it!
That’s their morality. If some little street girl
had murdered one of their lot
they wouldn’t cite her immaturity to absolve her.
But in truth in truth in truth
your real otherness
was not what even you thought made you other.
Your real otherness was poetry.
That’s the ultimate reason for their hatred
for poets are the salt of the earth
but they like their earth insipid.
In actual fact, they are innatural
& you are nature: Poetry—that is, nature.
•
And so, you’ve now cut loose.
You no longer care for reading the news
—your morning prayer—with the government
& currency in free fall
& idiot decrees whether large or small
& the laws & Real Big Laws. I hope
that one last earthly grace is left to you—for this short time:
the grace of smile & laughter. That from where you are now
but won’t stay long, from that other side, the No Place
you’re now passing through
you’ll smile & laugh at their profits & speculations & income
accumulations
embezzlements tax dodgings
& careers etc. That you’ll smile & laugh at that for a moment
before you return
to Paradise.
You were poor
& drove an Alfa like the poor do
to show off with your compatriots the poor,
provincial in your nice little latest-fashion outfits
like kids when they act richer than everyone else
out of their need to be loved by everyone else.
That’s what you really yearned for: to be like everyone else,
except no: you were OTHER—and why?
Because you were a poet.
And that’s why they won’t forgive you: you are a poet.
But you can laugh [at them].
Leave them with their newspapers & mass mija
& go off with your lonely poems
to Paradise.
Offer your book of poems to the gatekeeper of Paradise
& see how the golden door
falls open for you
Pierpaolo, my friend
(Rome, 13 February 1976)
Best known for her hugely influential novels, Elsa Morante (1912-1985) always considered herself first and foremost a poet. Her culture, politics and human generosity were at the root of her many friendships, including those with younger writers and poets such as Pier Paolo Pasolini, Giorgio Agamben and Dario Bellezza.
Cristina Viti is a translator and poet working with Italian, English and French. Recent publications include a full translation of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s La rabbia / Anger (Tenement Press, 2022), Luca Rastello’s The Rain’s Falling Up (Seagull Books, 2022), a seminal novel exploring the politics and spirit of the Seventies in Italy; the Selected Poems of Luigi Di Ruscio (Seagull Books, 2023); and a co-translation (with Souheila Haïmiche) of Anna Gréki’s collection Temps forts / The Streets of Algiers (Smokestack Books, 2020). Among earlier translations are the Selected Poems of Dino Campana (Survivors Press, 2006), which includes the full text of the Orphic Songs, and Elsa Morante’s The World Saved by Kids and Other Epics (Seagull Books, 2016), shortlisted for the John Florio Prize. Viti’s Italian rendition of Orson Welles’ Moby Dick—Rehearsed is in production with the Teatro dell’Elfo in Milan. Her translation of Furio Jesi’s essays on literature, myth and revolt, Time & Festivity (Seagull Books, 2021) is the subject of one of three video presentations on Jesi commissioned by the Italian Institute in London.
