Salvatore
Quasimodo
—in
translation by Anny Ballardini
Wind
in Tindari
("Vento a Tindari")
Tindari,
mild I know you
among wide hills hanging on waters
of sweet islands of god,
today you seize me
and bend in my heart.
I
climb heights aerial precipices,
absorbed by the pines wind,
and the party that lightly strolls with me
departs in the air,
sound and love wave,
and you catch me
from whom I badly withdrew,
and fears of shadows and of silences,
shelters of once assiduous sweetness
and death of soul.
To
you unknown is earth
where day by day I sink
and secret syllables I nourish:
a distinct light unfurls on glass
in its nightly dress,
and joy not mine rests
on your womb.
Sour
is exile,
and my search I kept closed in you
from harmony today changes
into premature anxiety of death;
and each love is a screen to sadness,
tacit step in the dark
where you set me
bitter bread to break.
Tindari
come back serene;
suave friend wakes me
who leans me into the sky from a cliff
and I feign fear to one who does not know
what profound wind beseeched me.
Alley
("Vicolo")
Sometimes
your voice calls me back,
and I do not know which skies, which waters
awaken in me:
a net of sun streaks
incisions
on your walls, where in the twilight,
a swinging of lamps,
from old shops
full of mirrors and sadness.
Another
time: a loom beat in the court
and you could hear at night a cry
of pups and children.
Alley: a cross of houses
calling one another softly,
and they do not know it is terrifying
to be alone in the dark.
Ancient Winter
("Antico Inverno")
Desire
of your clear hands
In the dark warmth of the flame:
they tasted of durmast and of rose;
of death. Ancient winter.
They
were
looking for millet, the birds,
And they were covered in snow;
so, too, your words.
A little sun, a halo of angel,
and then the fog; and the trees,
and the two of us, made of morning air.
In Me Lost, Every Form
("In Me Smarrita Ogni Forma")
Another
life kept me: solitary
among unknown people; a crust of bread for a gift.
In me is lost every form:
beauty, love—love from which deceit draws
the child, and sadness thereafter.
eratio
Jorge
Lucio de Campos
The
Guitar Lesson
for Balthus
1.
I
don't throw myself
to life
by chance:
I
don't exist, I glitter. I don't celebrate
the weepings that oppress me
and exhaust my sources
By
chance:
a dinossaur, a whale—
an impression of a few digits
In
a rappel à l’ordre I make the light
and the space
constitutes my collage—
it receives me in an
incoherent mirror
2.
I paralyze
my papers and
the poem loses its calculation, its metal, an
urgency that strings it
and my body dissipates—
a veiled extract
kidnaping the world
What
remains in myself
murmurs and
carries me out
undresses
attacks
sodomises me
3.
I exclude affections
and all at once
I change myself
utterly
If
one speaks to me
I don't reply
If one touches me
I fade out and devour
my tongue—
I
soil the tabula rasa
of my soul—
I paint a sunset
and then I flee
I
feign that
I don't hear
my guitar
lesson
eratio
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