eugenio montale

Corrispondenze

Or che in fondo un miraggio
di vapori vacill e si disperde
altro annunzia, tragli alberi, la squilla
del picchio verde

La mana che raggiunge il sottobosco
e trapunge la trama
del cuore con le punte dello strame,
e quella che mature incubi d'oro
a specchio delle gore
quando il carro sonoro
di Bassareo reporta folli mugoli
di arieti sulle toppe arse dei colli.

Torni anche tu, pastroa senzi greggi,
e siedi sul mio sasso?
Ti riconso; ma non so che leggi
oltre i voli che svariano sul passo.
Lo chiedo invanoal piano dove una bruma
esita tra baleni e spari su sparsi teti,
alla febbre nascosta del diretti
nella costa che fuma

Correspondence

On the skyline, a vapourous
mirage, wavers at breaking-point;
an through the trees a new thing is announced
by the green wood-pecker's yatter.

Discoveries are for the outstretched hand
searching the underwood, piercing
the heart's web with its littered points,
a hand that ripens gold nightmares
in the pond's mirror
when the roarof Bacchus' car
breaks through, rams stampeding i its wake
out of scorched patches in the hills.

And are you returning, girl from the fields,
to sit upon my stone?
I recognise you, but I've no access
to what you reading flights going beynd
the pass. I ask the plain where a brief
haze smokes between shots and flashes
on glinting roofs - I ask the express train's
simmering outbursts on the steaming coast

version by jeremy reid

apologies to italian speakers re lack of diacritics - can't make blogger do this.
i've included the original not just because one should but because it sounds better than reid's version (a definition he chooses rather than translation) though when i say better that's the sound in my head rater than the mangled italian that comes out of my mouth!