Cinque Terre

Between the train's long slide and the sun

ricocheting off the sea, anyone

would have fallen silent in those words,

the language of age in her face, the birds

cawing over the broken earth, gathering near its stones

and chapel doors. In the marina, the sea and its bones

have grown smaller. Though the tide is out,

it is not the tide nor the feathers nor the cat

that jumps into the street, the dust

lifting with each wing and disappearing. The rust-

colored sheets that wrap the sails of ships,

I don't know their name nor the way to say lips

of water in Italian and mean this: an old woman

stood by the tracks until his hand stopped waving.

Source: The Translator's Diary (New Issues Press, 2008)