If seasons pass too fast you’d better run.
If they proceed too slow indulge in fun.

Sunups are best enjoyed in days of cold.
Sundowns when heat waves linger fierce and bold.

Old age returns all that you thought was lost.
Except perennial snow and springtime frost.

Dost thou remember some of William’s verse?
The Proverbs telling what to bless or curse?

Worse lines are surely jotted down today.
And yet the ink invades the page to stay.

 

Alessio Zanelli is an Italian poet who writes in English and whose work has appeared in over 150 literary journals from 13 countries. He has published 4 full collections to date, most recently Over Misty Plains (Indigo Dreams, UK, 2012). For more information please visit www.alessiozanelli.it.

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11 Responses

  3. J. Simon Harris

    I really like this poem, especially the last two couplets. It’s very simple and beautiful. I’m not crazy about the title, though.

    Reply
    • Alessio Zanelli

      Thank you Simon!
      You’re not crazy about the title, but the title is crazy :))
      Forgive me, I like to invent crases every now and then.
      Ciaoooooo…

      Reply
  4. C.B. Anderson

    Alessio,

    I’ve read your poems over many years now, and I notice that you can shift into formalism as the mood takes you. Formal or not, your work is always very clean, which is not unusual in persons who write outside their birth language, for example Nabokov & Conrad. I wonder why this is. I might also cite Karl Popper, who managed to write some of the most lucid philosophical books ever to be printed in English.

    Reply
    • Alessio Zanelli

      Hi,
      I really wouldn’t know why…
      I’m completely self-taught in English, and I’ve been writing English poetry since the mid-1980s. Also, I’ve read a lot of English poetry (American, British, Irish…). Probably, writers in a second language feel or perceive the syntax and the semantics of the language they use differently to mother-tongue writers. For such writers, like me, it is quite difficult to manage diction and idioms, but sometimes, as you said, what we come up with can sound “very clean”.
      Thank you.
      Ciaoooo….

      Reply
    • Alessio Zanelli

      Hi,
      I wouldn’t know why…
      Maybe, writers using a second language like me feel and perceive the language they use differently to mother-tongue writers.
      We may be in trouble with diction and idioms, but as you said we can come up with something “very clean”.
      Ciaoooo…
      Alessio

      Reply

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