Laura Silvia Battaglia

Laura Silvia Battaglia

Why do you inflict this secateur-cut on me
you’re not pruning me, Gardener
you scythe the good grass
you have no pity on this plant
which is setting its roots in the future.

………………………… *

You no longer tend my bay-tree,
You no longer rub its aromatic leaves on your lips
to kiss them on silvery evenings.
But do you really think, Gardener,
that I didn’t notice how often you nuzzled the wisteria?

Laura Silvia Battaglia is a journalist, author and documentary maker. She is the co-producer with Matteo Scanni and Armando Trivellini of the documentary Maria Grazia Cutuli. Il prezzo della verità (2008) on Maria Grazia Cutuli, a journalist of the Italian daily Corriere della Sera killed in an explosion on 19 November 2001 on the road between Kabul and Jalalabad in Afghanistan. In the attack the El Mundo correspondent Julio Fuentes and two Reuters correspondents Azizullah Haidari and Harry Burton also died. The documentary is the result of three years of research and brings together previously unpublished material and interviews with many of her colleagues and those who were with her immediately prior to the explosion which killed her. She is the author of Mario Luzi-Luciano Sampaoli: Le arti amanti (2009).

translated from Italian to English by; Anthony Robbins
original source; “Gli Smerilliani tradotti”