Girlhood

By Jonathan Galassi b. 1949 Jonathan Galassi

If your bearded friend

helps you catch the trout

barehanded

in the pool of the dream

and you carry it in his pail

barefoot

up the rocky stream

to the playhouse where he fries it in his pan;

if you snip the dill

for the carrots and then swim

until your lips are bluer than the lake

where will it take you?

Not anywhere as pure

and primal as these sunstruck days

sistered by starstruck nights.

Don’t cloud the drowning

brightness of your eyes,

don’t answer my asking look

with anything but the truth,

don’t spill the fresh-picked

raspberries on the car seat

and stain your shirt with indelible blood.

Or spill them, darling.

How else will you know

the color of crushed time;

how else will you feel

what it is to change and remember,

to lose and absorb

this summer inside you,

xylem and phloem of your leafy future

already starting to spread its shade above us?

Source: North Street and Other Poems (HarperCollins Publishers Inc, 20002001)

Biography

In addition to publishing two volumes of poetry, Morning Run (1998) and North Street (2000), Jonathan Galassi is an eminent translator of Italian poetry. He has spent over 25 years studying Eugenio Montale’s poetry and has published several collections of Montale’s work, including Eugenio Montale: The Second Life of Art: Selected Essays (1982) and Collected Poems 1920–1954 (1998). Reviewing Collected Poems for the New York . . .

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