Anthony John Robbins
A native of England, studied English literature at university and taught criticism at the Australian National University before changing tack and entering the business world.
During 35 years of professional experience, he has continued reading critically and writing mainly poetry. He is also a translator of business and literary texts. Has three children and likes to cycle and walk in the country around Montevecchia. Now lives in Milan with the Italian poetess Mariella De Santis.

Via Ampère
O love, look not so deep into my eyes,
It hurts my heart.
Last night was my last night in paradise
For we must part.
In Via Ampère si sveglia il mercato
sbadiglia, si stiracchia, sistema le
piramidi di mele pere arance
come se nulla fosse, tutto in
equilibrio, mentre il mondo mio
trema, vacilla, s’inclina, beccheggia.
Tonight is my first night after the last
To still my heart.
O love, live not so deep inside my mind,
For we must part.


Waiting
(after Claudio Lombardi)
I left the door ajar for you
thinking you might drop by
just push it gently and
slipping in murmur a soft hello
please don't come too early
or too late but when to come you'll know
and I'll know when you're here
and open my arms in welcome
my love my last true love

The Uses of Sculpture
In Northerly parts I thought of tes fesses.
I'm sorry, but that was what supervened.
Somehow this summed up our separateness,
your coolness, the distance placed between
my pathological passion and its object,
however reprobate my choice of subject.
In a darkened back room of the classical Ny
Glyptotek, I found myself fondling une fesse nue,
the cool, smooth, Carrara buttock of a Bissen
nymph - dryad or nereid, I don't recall. Missing
you brought on this strange communing. I thought, too,
of Lowell's Mania in Buenos Aires '62:
he'd found his way to calm Republican graves,
partly from disgust with the living; waves
of horror hit him and his shoes hurt: all night his rest
was cupping his soft palm to Liberty's stone breast.
Minor poets do not have all night and are not mad
As a rule. Still, that marble buttock made me glad.


The Dealer and the Shrink (an Idyll, perhaps)
• L’amore, she said,
è la carne che sogna
o i sogni incarnati?
He scratched his head.
Whose daily truck with men is mostly verbal –
he trades in silly paper, phone-number figures,
while she tries somehow to sort the trees from
autism's silent wood, momently rent by screams –
might be forgiven a muddle. You know:
the heat of the moment, the haze of engagement.
Yet just suppose she says on the sofa
Seno and he associates Suck, murmurs
Cazzo and he (quick as quick) Kiss, whispers
Figa and he gasps Fuck, gurgles
Come sei grande! and lo, he is
or thinks he is. What then? Not much. In any case,
Would their fond fleshly bliss be mostly due
To love of dreams or dreamy love come true?

Nice picture
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