Winter 2008

On Autumn Afternoons
Maria Teresa Andruetto

—For María Cleofé Boglio

In the Argentine, her pater recited Pascoli,
brooding on autumnal Tuscan afternoons when,
as a boy, dogs straining at their leashes,
he walked with his father, searching for truffles.
Like the beads of a rosary, she counted the stations of his cross:
Mussolini, his years escaping, Paolo’s embrace, Ethiopia.
Under a plate in the kitchen she hid each coveted letter
from a cherished, faceless, stranger,
savoring the name of every distant cousin.
On her terrace, alone, on autumn afternoons,
she sensed, in the long shadows, that town she had never known:
the child in his father’s arms, the plangent dogs,
the desperate partisan chasing along the rooftops.
It was autumn then and war was raging.


Translated from the Spanish
by Peter Robertson