MARTINA MARIA MANCASSOLA

The Sky Draws the Curtains

The sky draws the curtains

as if ashamed

of its nakedness,

then starts to shout

like my mother

when I came home with a D in physics.

It opens its mouth

and hits a middle C,

like a tenor

contemptuous of silence.

It splits the city in two,

and the hearts of the weak.

Windows queue up

with their drums—

boom-boom, the rain

shatters on the panes;

its smell—traveller’s perfume—

is the new interpreter,

the voice the desperate need

to believe that

elsewhere

there is sun.

Then it all ends.

The curtain falls.

Applause.

Translated from Italian by Martina Maria Mancassola.

Martina Maria Mancassola (1992) is an Italian poet and therapeutic-writing facilitator. Author of Quando il mattino apre gli occhi (Eretica Edizioni, 2025). Her work appears in Altrove, Poeti Oggi, and is forthcoming in the Journal of Italian Translation(NYC, Nov 2025). She lives in Verona.

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