Italy, the great river
at the end of the voyage
where reeds puncture the sky,
stops
in the middle of a sweet, salty embrace.
gravity without weight, unbroken time that does not flow.
Cormorants display their chests, dry their wings,
Swans with offspring go with the current.
gulls glide, marsh harriers, egrets
and gray herons sketch the horizon.
Tracks of quick-footed otter cross the banks.
Silver mullets fly…
Galleggio! I am floating
on worn-out waves
on a beautiful white boat.
Such a nice package
to tie a pretty ribbon around,
whose contents
remain forever a mystery.
Galleggiano!
My thoughts float
on flaking waters
on a beautiful white boat.

SABRINA DE CANIO (Piacenza, Italy) Literature teacher, translator, co-director of Piccolo Museo della Poesi (Saint Christopher’s Poetry Museum) and director of its international activities, and founding member of Biennale Italiana di Poesia fra le Arti, the first Italian Biennale of Poetry among Arts (2023). Years spent in Africa give rise to her underlying theme, namely, resistance to adversity. Her bilingual collection in Italian and Serbo-Croatian language, “Libera nos a malo”( Deliver us from evil), was published in 2020, Besjeda Publisher. Recently published “Nel cuore del Silenzio (In the heart of silence), in Italian and Romanian, Editura Cosmopoli, 2023.