Day: January 14, 2020

Salvatore Quasimodo – Un sepolto in me canta/A Burial Sings in Me

William Samuel Henry Llewellyn, Waterbaby, 1910 I exile myself; so shadow fills with myrtle, and subdued space lays me down lightly. Nor does love achieve happy sylvan harmonies with me in a lonely hour: paradise and marshland sleep in the hearts of the dead. And a burial sings in me, that forces into the stony …

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Salvatore Quasimodo – Cavalli di luna e di vulcani/Horses of Volcanoes And The Moon

Joseph Noel Paton, Dionysus and Sea Nymphs, 1853 I inhabited islands green on a motionless sea. Shores of scorched seaweed, marine fossils, where the horses of volcanoes and the moon amorously race. In the hours of landslides leaves, cranes, assault the air: in the light of the flood clouded skies shine, open to stars; doves …

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Salvatore Quasimodo – Nascita del canto/The Birth Of Song

Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, Summer, 1891 Arise: re-emergent light: bright burning leaves. I lie down in brimming rivers where there are islands mirrors of shadows and stars. And your celestial heights overwhelm me, that always nurture my other life with joy. I long to reclaim you, though disillusioned, adolescence with infirm limbs. (Transl. by A. …

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Salvatore Quasimodo – Senza memoria di morte/Without memory of death

Pauwels Franck (Paolo Fiammingo), Assembly of the Gods: The Loves of the Gods, c. 1585 Spring heightens the trees and rivers; I cannot hear the deep voice lost in you, beloved. Without memory of death in the conjoined flesh, the roar of the final day rouses us adolescents. The grown branch my hand flowers in …

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Salvatore Quasimodo – Oboe sommerso/Sunken Oboe

Henri Gervex, Ophelia, 1910 Miser pain, delay your gift in this my hour of longed-for abandons. Chill, again an oboe utters joy of everlasting leaves, not mine, and disremembers; evening falls: the water sets on my grassy hands. In a dim sky, fleeting wings sway; the heart migrates and I am fallow and the days, …

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