Poetry Porch: Sonnet Scroll

---

Agony
by Ernesto Livorni
       Translated from the Italian by the author

For Mario Moroni

I rush to his broken cry /
cut off in the panting of pain /
I am sorry I am coming I just heard you /
yellowish liquid unbridled stench /
worn out sparrow-cheep /
it will go away it will I tell him bowed /
over his very child-like pain /
do you remember that summer on the quarter-deck /
you reveal your wound in the protrusion /
it embeds it in its flat rectangle /
he cries he chirps truly I    I /
would never have thought that suffering /
robs the human of bodily control /
it leaves you the frenzy of a pious penalty.

(26 September 1994 – 9 August 1997)

(Copyright © 1998 by Ernesto Livorni)