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                         Poems from  the Italian of 

                                LEOPARDI GIACOMO

            Night Song of a Wandering Asian Shepherd

                        The Evening of Fiesta Day

                                    To Sylvia

What do you do, moon, aloft? Let me know

what, silent moon, you do.

You rise each night; you go;

you contemplate the deserts; then you sleep.

Do you not have your fill

of ever ranging never-changing scenes?

Do you not loathe returning, are you still

eager for these ravines?

The shepherd’s life to him

is like your life. Each morning

he rises at first dawning:

moves on his flocks to other fields, beholds

more flocks, spring water, grasses;

then drops exhausted at the end of day:

expects no other way.

Say, moon, what can be found

of worth in life to him

and to you in your life?—where does it lead,

this transient drift of mine

and your eternal round?

Wizened, white-haired and broken,

barefoot and clad in rags,

a load, the heaviest, strung on his back,

by hill and valley track,

on knife-edged stones, through thickets, knee-deep sand,

in wind and tempest, when the hour of day

is oven-hot—or freezes,

he goes, goes on and wheezes,

fords waterfalls and bogs,

falling and rising, always stumbling on,

not resting to take food,

till lacerated, bleeding, he at last

arrives at where the path

and where his painful efforts have been leading:

a vast and horrid chasm

in which he plunges to oblivion.

Such, lunar chastity,

is life—mortality.

The life of man is labour;

just to risk dying is his lifeblood lent him.

He learns what will torment him

among the first things; his progenitors,

mother and father, start

consoling him for birth in their contrition.

Then, as he comes to grow,

one and the other help him. Ceaselessly

in utterance and act

they try to give him heart,

console him for his human destiny.

Parents do well to see

for offspring there is no more seemly pact.

Why bring to light, in fact;

why ever keep alive

one who must be consoled for having life?

If living has no cure

why do we so endure?

Moon, unassailed by touch,

mortality is such.

But, since you are not mortal,

words do perhaps not move you overmuch.

You in eternal, lonely pilgrimage

must be aware, as pensively you go,

of earth-life, what it is,

how we plod sighing as in pain we bend;—

also what dying is, the ultimate

diminishing of features,

how here the case is each man perishes

from off the earth, from every loving friend.

Certain it is you know

the why of things, for you behold the fruit

of evening and of morn,

the silent, endless, passing-by of time.

You know, you, for whom in her delight

the smiles of spring are born,

whom the heat betters, and for what device

the wintertime brings ice.

A thousand things you know, a thousand find,

which are from simple shepherds held from sight.

Often when I observe

your silent stay above the empty plain,

whose far rim gives the sky apparent bounds;

when with my flock I see

you dog my steps—with slow and steady gain;

when I watch stars burn in celestial heights;

a voice speaks in my mind:

Wherefore so many lights?

For what the sky’s infinity, for what

the deep, non-finite air? What signifies

this solitude immense? And what am I?

Converse I with myself so: of the chambers

unmeasured and superb,

and of the kin unnumbered they contain;

but in so much activity and motion

of all those things above, and here below,

that with no resting go,

always returning to where they began;

no use or benefit

in them I see. But you must without doubt,

immortal maiden, know the truth of it.

This do I feel and know:

that from the endless gyres

and from my fragile pain

some profit or content

others may have. To me life is a bane.

My flock at rest, how great your happiness:

I do not think you know your misery!

How much I envy you!

Not just because you go

as if completely free,

and every strain and blow—

and every terror—you at once forget;

but more because you do not suffer boredom.

When you upon the grass sit in the shade,

you are content and quiet,

existing mostly so

without distress a great part of the year.

When I sit in the shade upon the grass

thick clouds of torpor pass

across my mind, and pangs as from a spur.

Thus from me, supine, ever more deferred

is any peaceful base.

Yet nothing I desire

and cause for grief had I none until late.

What joy is yours, how great,

I know not, but the gods to you are good.

For me joy has no place,

nor, flock of mine, only at this I sorrow.

For if you understood

I would ask why a beast

which lies down lazily

is calm, fulfilled and blest,

while tedium engulfs me when I rest.

Were wings to elevate

my soul above the clouds

to number off the stars spread everywhere;

or could I like the thunder roam the crags;

I would be happier, oh sweet flock, I would

be happier, moon, whose whiteness rules the air.

Or would truth deviate

at thought of other beings and their fate?

Perhaps whatever state

life may be born to, in a croft or lair,

the time of birth is a funereal date.

(translated by Alan Marshfield)                             (back)

THE EVENING OF FIESTA DAY

The night is mild and clear without a breeze.

Silently over rooftops and through orchards

The moonlight pauses and far off reveals

Serenely every mountain. Oh my love,

Now every way is hushed, and here and there

A night lamp glimmers from the balconies.

You sleep, for slumber in your quiet rooms

Peacefully welcomes you; and not a care

Consumes; and little do you know or guess

How great a wound you opened in my heart.

You sleep: this sky above which so benign

Appears to view, I face around to greet,

And ancient Nature the omnipotent

Which fashioned me for pain. From you I sever

Hope, she said. Yes, even hope. May nothing

Illuminate your eyes but helpless tears.

This was fiesta day; now from its play

You take repose; and maybe you remember

In dreams how many pleased you, and how many

Today you pleased: but I, not that I hoped to,

Come not into your mind. Meanwhile I ask

How long I have to live, and here to earth

I fling myself, cry, quake. Oh horrible

In such green season! Yet upon the road

I hear not far away the lonely song

An artisan makes coming late at night

After his pleasures to his poor abode;

And frenziedly the heart in me contracts

To think how all things worldly pass away

And leave but little mark. See, it has gone,

Fiesta day, and after the fiesta

A vulgar day succeeds, and time bears off

All human circumstance. Where now the sound

Of antique nations? Now where is the fame

Of ancestors renowned, the mighty empire

Of Rome that was, its armour and alarms

Which ventured over land and over ocean?

Now all is calm and still, and all that world

Has ceased, and no word more is said of it.

In my young days, an age when fervently

We waited for fiesta day, when—once

It passed—I, sick of heart, would lie awake,

Pressed to my pillow: in the deep of night

A song that one could hear along the paths

Fading away, little by little dying,

In just such vein would once contract my heart.

(translated by Alan Marshfield)                             (back)

TO SILVIA

Silvia, do you remember

That time in your allotted mortal days

When beauty lit with splendour

Those eyes which smiled as they would shyly glance,

When to youth’s brink with gay and pensive grace

You made your first advance?

The solemn chambers hummed,

And the surrounding ways,

To your perpetual song,

When you, upon your female tasks intent

Sat utterly content

With that bright future which in mind you had.

It was the fragrant Maytime; you were glad

Like this to pass your days.

I then my pleasant studies

And toil-worn notes would leave behind untended,

On which my early years

And the best part of me had been expended.

From parapets of my paternal home

I strained to hear the sound your humming made—

To where your quick hand played

Nimbly across the wide and tiring loom.

Eyes on clear sky I’d rest;

On orchards; gilded streets;

This way the sea far-off, that way the mountains.

No mortal tongue can utter

What I felt in my breast.

What happy thoughts were mine,

What hopes, emotions deep, Oh Sylvia!

How happy human life

And fate seemed in that hour!

When so much hope returns to memory,

Depression falls upon me

Disconsolate and sour,

And to grieve more at my ill lot I turn.

Oh world, Oh Nature stern,

Why afterwards not meet

Your once-made promises, but so much ply

Your children with deceit?

You, before wintertime had bared the stems,

When an unseen disease assailed and won,

Perished, Oh tender girl, and did not see

Your years come into flower;

Nor did it soothe remorse

That now your raven hair was nobly praised,

Or now revered your timid, loving glance;

Nor could on holidays your friends perchance

With you of love discourse.

So perished all too soon

My own bright hopes: to those years passed alone

Also the fates denied

A space for youth. Alas,

How have—how have you flown,

My dear companion of those early days,

And hopes that I lament!

Such is the world, and these

The works, events, the pleasures and the bliss

We spoke of much in times together spent.

The portion of humanity is this?

At the approach of truth,

Forlorn, you fell: and with hand elevated

Towards cold death and a bare, vacant tomb

You pointed where they waited.

(translated by Alan Marshfield)                             (back)

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