Concetta La Placa is Doctor Honoris Causa (CIESART) and a poet, writer, aphorist, critic, translator, social activist and author of the *Alessandria. Post*.

Her poems were published in over 50 anthologies and in magazines in the world, translated into several languages. She published eleven collections of poetry. The eleventh is: “Poesie d'Amore Cosmico”. She is an Ambassador for IFCH Forum and also an Ambassador for Indonesia for Rini Valentina and an honorary doctor from the IFCH. She worked as a lecturer at L.U.M.S.A. University in Rome and at the Ministry of Labour and Social Policies. She received: Honorary Doctorate 2025 and the Palma de Mar Award 2025, (CIESART), as well as the Medal of Merit and Career Achievement from the CIESART.

1.      AND YET THE SKY IS IMMENSE

I am sitting here behind this window,
in the company of my aching thoughts.

I feel a certain heaviness tightening my throat.
In this empty and sorrowful room, a confined space where the only sound is the distant echo…
of a life shut outside,
a life to which, for a long time now,
I no longer belong.

And yet, from time to time, I try to survive
these days that drift by in grey anxiety,
days in which I feel
it is somewhat like dying,
diving into the memory of memories,
of a life once filled with hope that is no more.

I wish I could let certain feelings flow
as though they were still untouched, alive, present…
but their sublimation has replaced them forever.
And yet, at this moment, they return
through my weary imagination,
and I feel they are only flashes of lightning and thunder from this afternoon storm raging outside.

Over time, we built the illusion of a better life, within a breach of hope that turned into melancholy,between the words spoken
and our tangible absence, between what love once was for us and the eternal waiting for better times, now emptied of emotional tension.

Now, from time to time, nostalgia rages on like a dark cloud,
a nostalgia that torments the soul,
that at moments makes me fragile crystal, and at others strong, as though I possessed a heart of iron, hardened to face the other ungrateful days
that I know will come.

I do not know whether, in the future, someone reading these scattered verses of mine will find the thread of this river of love once given,
which has dispersed into a thousand streams within this enigmatic and ungrateful life, a life that gives and takes away without even a trace of compassion.

© Concetta La Placa

 Rome, May 16, 2026 — 5:46 PM