Our once a week visit to town, and of course
the post office, brought up this neat little
booklet of translations by Walter Franceschi,
untitled and double-stapled and thoroughly
modest the way the best poetry comes,
and all poems by an old friend to Longhouse ~
Franco Beltrametti
Franco visited us a few times with our mutual
friend Jim Koller and both would
bring stories and poems and art
work to us from the open road
THERE ARE MANY STRANGE OBJECTS DRIFTING IN THE WORLD
why don't you write longer epics
Lawrence Ferlinghetti once asked me
I had some broken ribs and a girl friend
took a nice picture of us
we were in Big Sur it was at the end of January
on the beach we found a wooden woman
shoe mold and I said there are many
strange objects drifting in the world
and Lawrence said this can be
the opening of a long epic and what do you know
years later somebody would take a picture of us
in Amsterdam near a bicycle painted like a zebra
6-7/8/82
____________________________
Franco Beltrametti
from Tutto Questo
translated by Walter Franceschi
