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Two poems from the Italian of
UMBERTO SABA
Ulysses
Mid-afternoon
in Wintertime
ULYSSES
There
was a time in youth I navigated
down
the Dalmatian coast. The rugged islets
would
rear from the sea’s surface (where infrequent
birds
would await intent upon their prey),
slippery,
capped with seaweed, but in sunlight
pretty
as emeralds. When the high tide
and
night obliterated them, our sails
would
slip to leeward and the open sea
to
dodge their treachery. Today my realm
is
that one fit for no man. The harbour there
lights
up for other folk. To open sea
I
am impelled yet by unconquered will
and
by life’s heavy, sorrow-laden love.
(Translated
by Alan Marshfield)
(back)
MID-AFTERNOON
IN WINTERTIME
That
time in time I still had happiness
(may
God forgive a word so great and dreadful),
who
was it that reduced my puny joy
almost
to tears? It was, you’ll say, a certain
beautiful
creature who passed by you there
and
smiled at you. But no, a child’s balloon,
an
ultramarine, meandering balloon
in
the light blue of air, the native heaven
never
so bright as on a clear and cold
mid-afternoon
in middle wintertime.
Sky
with some tiny drifts of whitest cloud
and
house windows with sunlight all on fire
and
tenuous smoke from chimneys here and there
and
over all things the divinity
of
things: that bubble slipped the fingers of
a
child’s incautious hand (and he was crying
with
such distress, ringed by a crowd, with such
unhappiness)
between the Stock Exchange
and
the Café where from a window-seat
I
watched with wonder and with shining eyes
the
rise and fall of what had been his joy.
(Translated
by Alan Marshfield)
(back)
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