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Poems from the Italian of
SALVATORE QUASIMODO
From
Castle Mount, High Bergamo
Imitating
Joy
Letter
to my Mother
Oh
My Animals, Dear
Sunken
Oboe
Street
in Agrigentum
LETTER
TO MY MOTHER
‘Mater
dulcissima, now descend the mists,
the
Naviglio canal pushes its banks in confusion,
the
trees are swollen with water, on fire with snow;
I
am not sad in the North—am not
at
peace with myself, but do not expect
pardon
from any. Many there are owe me tears
man
gives to man. I know you’re not well, living
as
all the mothers of poets do, poor
and
perfect in the size of their love
for
distant sons. Today it is I
who
write you.’ Finally, you’ll say, two words
from
the boy who ran off in the night, in a short cape,
a
few lines in his pocket. Poor dear, so ready of heart,
they’ll
kill him one day in some place or other.
‘I
remember, of course, it was from the grey yard
of
sluggish trains which freighted almonds and oranges
to
the Imera estuary, the river full of magpies,
salt,
eucalyptus. But now I thank you,
I
want to, for the irony which you placed
on
my lip, mild-mannered like your own.
That
smile has saved me from pain and weeping.
And
it does not count if I have tears for you now,
for
all who like yourself are expecting something
and
know not what. Ah, kindly death,
touch
not the clock that ticks on the kitchen wall.
All
my childhood has passed on its enamelled
dial,
with those colourful flowers it has.
Do
not touch the ancient hands and the ancient heart.
Perhaps
there will be an answer? Oh death of mercy,
death
of shame. Goodbye, my dear, goodbye, my
dulcissima
mater.’
(translated
by Alan Marshfield)
(back)
From
CASTLE MOUNT, HIGH
BERGAMO
You
heard the cockerel call through the air
over
the ramparts, from beyond the turrets
icy
with a light which you did not notice,
a
call striking with life, and also murmurs
of
voices inside cells, and the clamour
of
the sentinel bird before daybreak.
And
you did not speak one word to yourself,
being
now in a circlet of tiny rays:
and
silent the antelope and the heron,
lost
in a gust of malignant smoke,
emblems
of a world all but unborn.
And
the February moon passed overhead
openly
above the earth, but to you a form
in
memory, lit only by its own quiet.
Now
you from the cypresses of the Mount
also
depart without sound; and here anger
is
silenced by the green of the young dead,
and
remote sorrow is almost like joy.
(translated
by Alan Marshfield)
(back)
OH
MY ANIMALS, DEAR
Now
autumn spoils the hilly green,
oh
my animals, dear. We’ll hear again,
before
the night, the last lamentation
of
birds, the clamour of the grey
plain,
advancing to that high noise
of
the sea. And the smell of wood in the fresh
rain,
the smell emanating from hollows—
how
sharp it is between the chalets,
among
the men, oh my animals, dear.
This
face which slowly turns its eyes,
this
hand which marks the sky’s space where
tumbles
a thunder, are yours, oh my wolves,
my
foxes conflagrating in blood.
Every
hand, every face, entirely yours.
You
tell me that it has all been in vain,
life,
the days worn by ineluctable
water,
while there rises from gardens
a
chanting of children. Now far perhaps
from
us now? In the air they give way
like
shadows, if as much. This voice yours.
But
I know perhaps that all has not been.
(translated
by Alan Marshfield)
(back)
SUNKEN
OBOE
Greedy
pain, delay your gift
in
this hour of all-
longed-for
abandon.
An
ice-oboe clarifies
evergreen
joy
—not
mine—recall is stifled.
It
is evening in me.
Welts
of dried water
stain
grassy hands.
Wings
in a dim sky fitfully
hover.
The heart migrates.
I
am fallow,
the
days all debrís.
And
It’s Suddenly Evening
Each
one is alone on the world’s heart,
transfixed
by a stab of sunlight:
and
it’s suddenly evening.
(translated
by Alan Marshfield)
(back)
IMITATING
JOY
Where
the trees make
evening
even more desolate
—how
languidly
your
last step has vanished—
as
the linden tree flower hardly
obtrudes
and insists on its fate.
You
search a motive for feelings,
undergo
a silence in life.
To
me mirrored time reveals
a
different adventure. Now beauty,
like
death, saddens,
brightening
in other faces.
Every
innocent thing now lost,
even
in this voice, surviving
to
imitate joy.
(translated
by Alan Marshfield)
(back)
STREET
IN AGRIGENTUM
There
wind endures I remember alight
in
the manes of cantilevered horses
racing
along the plains, a wind which
soils
and gnaws sandstone and heart
of
gloomy caryatids cast down
to
earth. Superannuated soul, grey
with
rancour, return to the wind, breathe in
the
delicate musk which reattires
the
giants stricken supine by heaven.
How
lonely in the space which is left you!
And
you more stricken if you hear still the sound
which
elongates to the far-off sea
where
Hesperus streaks the early daylight.
The
jew’s harp mournfully vibrates
in
the mouth of the carter who is climbing
the
hill bright with moonlight, slow
in
the murmuring of saracenic olives.
(translated
by Alan Marshfield)
(back)
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