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Mariani has emerged as one of the few significant post-Montalian poets in Italy, and Molino is a graceful, experienced, thoroughly reliable translator. The result is an elegant book, an important book, bringing a distinctive voice into English.Rosanna WarrenCulled from his entire career, the poems in Traces of Time cover numerous themes, most prominently the poets relationship to history and how poetry can exist outside of it. Tiananmen, 20 Years Later, Protocols of War, and Checkmate about 911 all illustrate Lucio Marianis concerns through images both dense and porous, lines both cadenced and spasmodic, and confirm his place in contemporary poetry.Protocols of WarBaghdad is not farOf this time youll gather no memoriesfor your eternal hunger.Cant you see the slags in the weavethat enfolds the flesh of the livingCant you see that the boxes and drawerswhere the silver of bygone days aboundshave no room for trinkets or seashellsof a present founded on plaster markets,lost facing a mirrorseeking itself in the halls of the worldDont you see that for the first timeevery man erects ruins for his heirsenacting inane protocols of warwhile the future slams its shutters tightso as to celebrate on statistical altarsthe glory of mindless marionettesmaneuvered by nothingness,sprung in the bitter fields of oblivionOf this time youll gather no memories.