{"id":16570,"date":"2020-11-30T17:16:27","date_gmt":"2020-11-30T23:16:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/?p=16570"},"modified":"2020-11-30T22:31:12","modified_gmt":"2020-12-01T04:31:12","slug":"to-a-foreigner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/archives\/16570","title":{"rendered":"To a Foreigner"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center\"><em>A poem by\u00a0 Alfonso Gatto, translated by<\/em>\u00a0<em>Lisa Mullenneaux\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<p>If you only knew, Italy<br \/>\nis a poor land where man<br \/>\nis born with the dead, blue with the stones<br \/>\nof ages, the cathedral next to his house.<br \/>\nShe has blue evenings<br \/>\nand dark swallows on her cornices,<br \/>\nthe whole world is the fragrance<br \/>\nof a field of wildflowers, of the sea<br \/>\nlost in its own color.<br \/>\nAnd nothing is left her but to call,<br \/>\nnothing is left but to love<br \/>\ndead things<br \/>\nlost things<br \/>\nthe moon on the doors<br \/>\nand mute faces.<\/p>\n<p>If you only knew, Italy<br \/>\nis the poor land where one hopes to say<br \/>\ngoodbye to the mountains, where<br \/>\nmoon-bleached villages stretch<br \/>\nat evening into the arms of their mothers.<br \/>\nAnd all this is so tender, distant\u2014<br \/>\nlanterns where flames tremble<br \/>\non ships at sea, sleep easily broken<br \/>\nby babies\u2019 cries.<br \/>\nAnd nothing is left us but to be quiet<br \/>\nthrough all the long evenings,<br \/>\nnothing left us but to watch<br \/>\nthe trains that climb to the horizons.<\/p>\n<p>Each man is born here with his own life,<br \/>\nand loves it fiercely and pits it against the dead,<br \/>\nthe stones, the churches. If his heart<br \/>\nbears the sorrow that consumes him<br \/>\nin actions, words, and faces one day<br \/>\nItaly will sing amid her people<br \/>\nof opened tombs, of evenings the color<br \/>\nof blood where hate is stronger than the eyes,<br \/>\nthe mouth, the hands that shake the light.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h6><a href=\"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/archives\/16501\">Alfonso Gatto &amp; Lisa Mullenneaux\u00a0<\/a><\/h6>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A poem by\u00a0 Alfonso Gatto, translated by\u00a0Lisa Mullenneaux\u00a0 If you only knew, Italy is a poor land where man is born with the dead, blue with the stones of ages, the cathedral next to his house. She has blue evenings and dark swallows on her cornices, the whole world is the fragrance of a field [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2211,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[66],"tags":[36],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Jypy-4jg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16570"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2211"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16570"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16570\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16571,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16570\/revisions\/16571"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16570"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16570"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16570"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}