In Parma with A.B.

translated by Marcus Perryman & Peter Robinson

I
Green vapour tree
at the margins of a city.
A vaporous green.
                What else?
To be something else. To be you.
For a long time a long time ago
I'd have liked to be like you
the poet of this city.
With arguments then impassioned.
Unreciprocated then.
Nothing else to say today
knowing that start of green
becomes continuous pain.

II
If I say lighted window
if I say avenue drenched with rain
it's nothing, not even a song.
Even for me my evening in Parma
would have had voice were I you
...