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Poems from the Italian of
EUGENIO MONTALE
Correspondences
Twenty Motets
For
the Album
From
‘Mediterranean’
From
‘Cuttlefish Bones’
Day
and Night
Delta
Dora
Markus
Eastbourne
Falsetto
Harry
(Arsenio)
Hitler
Spring
Motet
On
a Letter Never Written
Sea-front
The
Eel
The
Magnolia’s Shade
The
House of Customs
Wind
in the Crescent
THE
MAGNOLIA’S SHADE
The
shade of the Japanese magnolia tree
dissipates
now that the nearly purple buds
have
fallen. An intermittent vibrato
of a cicada rises ...
Eugenio Montale (translated
by Alan Marshfield)
(back)
(For full translation
see the Kindle ebook The Translations of Alan Marshfield)
MOTET
The
known: again must lose you. Cannot!
All
actions, noises—marksman shots—
panic
me—as do salt heaves
...
Eugenio Montale (translated
by Alan Marshfield)
(back)
(For full translation
see the Kindle ebook The Translations of Alan Marshfield)
DELTA
I’ve
ligatured the life that’s broken off
secret
transfusions to you:
...
(translated
by Alan Marshfield)
(back)
(For full translation
see the Kindle ebook The Translations of Alan Marshfield)
WIND
IN THE CRESCENT
Edinburgh,
1948
The
big bridge did not lead to you.
I
would have reached you, navigating
even
sewers at your behest ...
Eugenio Montale (translated
by Alan Marshfield)
(back)
(For full translation
see the Kindle ebook The Translations of Alan Marshfield)
HITLER
SPRING
Nor
her whom to look on the sun turns round...
(Dante(?)
to Giovanni Querini)
Dense
the albino cloud of lunatic moths
twirls
round the fading lamps and on parapets,
spreading
the ground with a sheet on which feet
screech
as on sugar ...
Eugenio Montale (translated
by Alan Marshfield)
(back)
(For full translation
see the Kindle ebook The Translations of Alan Marshfield)
CORRESPONDENCES
Now
when afar a mirage of mists
vacillates
and disperses,
the
woodpecker in the trees drills out
another
annunciation.
...
Eugenio Montale (translated
by Alan Marshfield)
(back)
(For full translation
see the Kindle ebook The Translations of Alan Marshfield)
EASTBOURNE
‘God
save the king!’ intone trombones
from
a pavilion stuck on a pier
that
leaves a route for the tide when it rises
...
Eugenio Montale (translated
by Alan Marshfield)
(back)
(For full translation
see the Kindle ebook The Translations of Alan Marshfield)
From
‘MEDITERRANEAN’
2
Ancient
of days, I am drunk with the voice
escaping
the mouths that you lift
like
green bells which then crash
back
and asunder.
...
Eugenio Montale (translated
by Alan Marshfield)
(back)
(For full translation
see the Kindle ebook The Translations of Alan Marshfield)
FALSETTO
Little
Esther, being twenty’s a menace to you,
a
darkly blushing cloud
which
little by little involves you.
...
Eugenio Montale (translated
by Alan Marshfield)
(back)
(For full translation
see the Kindle ebook The Translations of Alan Marshfield)
From
‘CUTTLEFISH BONES’
2
To
loll, afternoons, pallid, abstracted,
by
a baking-hot garden wall,
to
listen among the thorns and the scrub
to
blackbirds clicking and the rustle of snakes.
...
Eugenio Montale (translated
by Alan Marshfield)
(back)
(For full translation
see the Kindle ebook The Translations of Alan Marshfield)
FOR
THE ALBUM
I
began before daybreak
to
sling my hook (nicknamed ‘hooked-on-her’) for you;
in
the scummy wells I could not
catch
me a single tail-flash
...
Eugenio Montale (translated
by Alan Marshfield)
(back)
(For full translation
see the Kindle ebook The Translations of Alan Marshfield)
DAY
AND NIGHT
Even
a sidling feather can sketch your figure,
or
the sunray playing hide-and-seek among sofas,
reflected
in a child’s mirror from the roof-tops.
...
Eugenio
Montale (translated
by Alan Marshfield)
(back)
(For full translation
see the Kindle ebook The Translations of Alan Marshfield)
ON
A LETTER NEVER WRITTEN
For
a swarm of dawns, for a few
wires
on which are straggled
the
threads of life looped into
hours
and years, today dolphins in couples
leap
with their young?
...
Eugenio
Montale (translated
by Alan Marshfield)
(back)
(For full translation
see the Kindle ebook The Translations of Alan Marshfield)
SEA-FRONT
It’s
blowing more and the dark is torn
to
rags, the shadow which drops from you on
the
thin palings crinkles. It is too late
...
Eugenio
Montale (translated
by Alan Marshfield)
(back)
(For full translation
see the Kindle ebook The Translations of Alan Marshfield)
DORA
MARKUS
It
was where the wooden pier
juts
into the ocean at Porto Corsini
and
a few men, almost immobile,
drop
and draw nets.
...
Eugenio Montale (translated
by Alan Marshfield)
(back)
(For full translation
see the Kindle ebook The Translations of Alan Marshfield)
HARRY
Boisterous
winds spread dust
over
roofs, in circles, and over
blank
spaces where hatted donkeys
snuff
dirt stock-still ...
Eugenio Montale (translated
by Alan Marshfield)
(back)
THE
HOUSE OF CUSTOMS
You
don’t remember the customs house upon
the
steep cliff’s edge above the rocky coast.
Lonely
it waits for you since that night when
your
ideas in a swarm came there and entered
and
stayed awhile, restless.
...
Eugenio Montale (translated
by Alan Marshfield)
(back)
(For full translation
see the Kindle ebook The Translations of Alan Marshfield)
THE
EEL
The
eel, the siren of
icy
waters which leaves the Baltic
to
reach our waters, reach
the
estuaries, the rivers
deeply
beneath whose hostile spate it mounts,
...
Eugenio Montale (translated
by Alan Marshfield)
(back)
(For full translation
see the Kindle ebook The Translations of Alan Marshfield)
top
of page
TWENTY
MOTETS
1
The
known: again must lose you. Cannot!
All
actions, noises—marksman shots—
panic
me—as do salt heaves
which
overbrook
harbour
mole and make spring fazed
in
Netherbrook.
note
...
Eugenio Montale (translated
by Alan Marshfield)
(back)
(For full translation
see the Kindle ebook The Translations of Alan Marshfield) |
