Translated by: Ana Jelnikar & Stephen Watts
This day comes foretold
for the black king and white queen.
Let the heavy doors roll wide open :
they will be swimming in the pool of the afternoon sun,
guardians of the one world,
that seeps through rock into books and eyes,
into the beginnings of thoughts
crushing the absent evening.
Venetian proportions do not shatter idyllic life
which merges from the senses.
I am afraid for you, kidnapped Europa.
(To Francesco Robba, in the church of St. Jacob, 1723–1733)