The ditch we have to jump over is a gorge. Pinocchio is an odyssey. It's big and cumbersome.

Let's cut the anthology, the songs of repatriation. / Let's report the facts and words exactly.

Eureka! I said to myself. Now I understand. I had understood.

Mama confuses names, just like Nonna does, and even makes me make a fool of myself (just like them).

To win the challenge, the ghost had made a contorted face at me, the face of a lunatic.

You have to be away from Italy to see Italy.

That same history / that kissed the flags in order to make off with them, / brought me your body.

Poetry is useless, it serves only / to behead a king / or seduce a young woman.

I Insane asylum is a word much bigger than the dark vortex of dreams, yet it used to come once upon blue thread or a distant nightingale's song or your mouth opened, biting at the blue the fierce…

Whoever approaches my house / will find a day / that is completely Friday.

Once he was certain that a man in the crowd had touched her. In front of everyone he hit her.

It appears unexpectedly, in its ancient and dark abyss. At the sight of it, I don't know why, I lost my breath and I slowed my step.

...perhaps reassured by the alcoholic content of the drink or perhaps answering to a distant sense of urgency, finally suggests, perhaps we shouldn't have cut the death of the father.

There are also moments when we leave behind words of love and silences to talk about poetry. You rest your voice in the past and recall the title of a book, The story behind some verses, adolescent nights…

Aline . . . In another era, that girl would have been a fairy, one of those superhuman creatures capable of transforming the men who come across their path.

The girl is petrified. And I know that the man who has drowned in the reservoir is our father.

The first pride Rosa felt on this day was for herself.

In my dreams Petro doubles and triples, one moment he's young, the next he's old.

Now I go back to my worry again. This is my bed, so why do I feel alienated? I spent my childhood, my adolescence, my youth here . . .

Barada, oh father of all riversOh, horse that races the daysBe, in our sad history, a prophetWho receives inspiration from his lordMillions acknowledge you as an ArabPrince . . . so pray as an imamOh…

A paper kite, black with yellow stripes, dangled from the branches of the gulmohur tree, and a flock of agitated crows flew around it cawing. Some went in perilously close, others hopped restlessly on…

How do the gardens of Sham transform me?

 The blue of depth is sadnessand the depth of blue-sadnessand a star quivering tears in this space-Language at the peak of clarityunfurls the night . . .Indeed, the moment is wounded by a dreamto…

Loving, my girl. Just loving. But it is a sin that deserves Paradise as a reward.

Everything would have passed easily if it hadn't been for the moment of sudden darkness.

What was going on? I asked the boy beside me in the car. His answer explained everything and nothing: The President was dead.

It reminds me of the past, of the time when I too came looking for the world of my ancestors.

After this silence reigned. A silence I had not heard the likes of a day since I entered the cell.

Begging is the profession of humiliation and degradation, but Fatima possessed a great sense of dignity and self-worth.

Your cooing wears me out at night—                    so wear me out.Like wine in the odes, you go on cooingand leave me what moves horses   …