AS I TRANSLATED A POEM ABOUT LEONARDO DA VINCI'S DRAWING BY MICHAEL FIELD

The morning's vivid light,

brilliance cast 

                        over the withered

land, faded

                    to bleak white

like a slaughterer's armband

as the quick hours 

                               passed,

and where was I

when the sunbeams 

                                  playing

made alive 

the dead season?

Inside, in a cage of walls,

away from the light

flooding the fields,

greening black woods,

in a dim room 

                         translating

dead words of lost,

sinful lovers, 

                      trying

to give the poem

what the sunbeams

gave 

        to the desolate land

four months from first flower,

and now, 

                as the poem

is done,

              as the briefly

awakened land

                         is bleak 

and without the shimmering 

                            gold,

I would cast aside

                              all the words

that twitch like a dead

frog in Volta's current.

23.12.2025