La felicità cammina per strada
con una bici scrostata e un vestito
azzurro. Si solleva passando
davanti al bar, ai signori in velocità
nella frenata alla svolta della piazza.
Lei se ne va correndo col sobbalzo
degli sguardi che si alzano. Va con l’aria
tra le coste. Il manubrio senza sosta
da solo in tondo nel paese. Si ciba dei muri
bianchi, della luce nei soffitti a cielo aperto
con gli odori, che diffondono di pranzo.
Signore mio, Signore, ogni respiro ancora
mi è solo tutta vita in avanzo.
*
Happiness crosses the street
on a rusty bicycle in a light blue dress. She waves
to the gentlemen as she passes in front of the bar,
speedily taking a turn off the square.
She starts away,
when their looks rise up.
Fabric flows with the air between spokes.
Handlebars turn, alone, without stopping, at a pace through the village.
Her wheels’ white walls feed on the roofless skylight
and nice smells announce the spread of lunch.
Lord, my Lord,
every breath
is just all of my life left behind.
Valentina Colonna
La felicità cammina per strada / Happiness crosses the street
About Valentina Colonna
Valentina Colonna is an Italian poet and piano composer, born in Turin in 1990 in a family of musicians. She has published three poetry books, Dimenticato suono (Manni, 2010), La cadenza sospesa (Aragno, 2015) and Stanze di città e altri viaggi (Aragno, 2019). Her second book came out in Argentina in 2020 (La cadencia suspendida, translation by Mario Chávez Carmona, Buenos Aires Poetry). She has been translated and published in more than ten countries and she has been invited to several international Literature Festivals. After obtaining her Master’s degree in Piano, Valentina focused on the Baroque repertoire, studying harpsichord at the ESMUC of Barcelona (Spain). Currently, she is carrying out a project called PianoPoetry, which gathers her piano and poetry composition. After her master’s degree in Linguistics in 2021 she earned her Ph.D. in Digital Humanities (Linguistics) at the Universities of Genoa and Turin: her dissertation outlines the first history of Italian poetry reading from the 1960s to the present. She created the national vocal archive Voices of Italian Poets and she also worked at the musical programs of Vatican Radio.