I know what the right word is.

I know it and you don't

you don't know it because you are afraid

I know it because I have courage.

It is not mine this courage

but it's mine when I have it.

Patrizia Cavalli

translated by Kris ten Ina Grimes

Author affiliation:

Patrizia Cavalli was born in 1947 in Todi, Umbria, and now lives in Rome. Poems from her first three collections, beginning with Le mie poesie non cambie ranno il mondo (Einaudi, 1974) have been translated in My Poems Will Not Change the World: Selected Poems 1974-1992, by Barry Callaghan and Francesca Valente (Toronto: Exile Editions, 1998). Sempre aperto teatro The Theater that Never Closes) (Einaudi, 1999) won the Viareggio-Repaci Prize. Her latest volume of poetry, Pigre divinit? e pigra sorte (Einaudi, 2006) received the Premio Internazionale Pasolini. Cavalli 's unique style is characterized by brief, epigrammatic lyrics, a subtle musicality, and the tension between classical poetic forms and a colloquial lexicon.