What's going through Deola's mind
Deola whiles away the morning by sitting in a café
and nobody even sees her. At this hour throughout the city
everyone’s scuttling under still cool sunlight. She, however,
luxuriates in a lack of business, smokes, breathes air
mostly her own. Back at the pensione she’d be asleep by order,
if only to regather her powers for another stint
upon the duvet filthied by the boots of customers,
those pains in the spine. Things on your own are different.
Work’s less like slavery, something you can take
or leave. The gentleman yesterday, waking her early,
kissed her, then insisted she accompany him to the station
and see him off (‘Darling, I’d stay with you here in Turin
if I could’).
She’s a bit dazed, but otherwise feels fine,
in freedom a newfound pleasure, time to drink her milk
and nibble brioches. This morning she’s half-way to being ‘Signora’
and, if she spies passers-by, it’s merely to stave off boredom.
At the pensione she’d be catching some duty sleep, such a fug
in there, it’s small wonder the Madame goes out walking.
To work the local dives and nightspots requires assets
that, at the age of thirty, are in increasingly short supply.
Deola sits readjusting her profile in the mirror,
scrutinising herself in the cool clear glass. A bit off-colour,
but it has nothing to do with the hang of smoke. She furrows her brow.
You need a steel will like Mari’s if you’re to survive
back there (‘because, dear girl, men visit the pensione
to satisfy the very yearnings which girlfriends and wives
don’t want to know about’) and yet Mari would work
tirelessly, with brio even, and somehow kept her health.
Deola doesn’t pay the passers going by the café
another thought now she works evenings only, contenting herself
with leisurely pick-ups at a local dance-place. Glancing
at a customer, playing footsie, she lets the orchestra
orchestrate her new career as an actress in a love scene
with some rich young lead. A single pick-up per night
and she can make do. (‘Maybe yesterday’s gentleman
will take me with him after all.’) To stay alone from choice,
and sit inside the café. To be one’s own woman.
Translated by Martin Bennett
Page(s) 122
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The