Wednesday, February 12, 2020

FRANCO BELTRAMETT I ~






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