“Seven Aphorisms” by Alda Merini

I am a furious
little bee.

To mistake shit
for chocolate
is the privilege
of the overeducated.

Every man is a friend
to his own
pathology.

I never speak
when I am not
turned on.

The gun
I point at my head
is called poetry.

Every tibia loves its fibula.

Alda Merini
is tired of repeating
that she is crazy.

 

Translated by Carla Billitteri


Source: FSG Book of Twentieth-Century Italian Poetry: An Anthology. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2015. Print. P 493.

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