|
|
|
|
Fabio Pusterla 
Simon Knight, Translator
from Pietra Sangue
Translated from the Italian by Simon Knight
Translated from the Italian by Simon Knight
Preliminaries on the ground
Birch tree turned to stone, black pile
of wood laden with snow, and in the sky
wind or ice choking off life. Is this total
silence, then, a cycle
that no mercy can break or describe, blind
winter that will not hear of spring?
Frost that splits tree trunks, opens the veins
of the earth, breaks down the clods
and watches them die?
But look, just over there, a shrew!
What can a shrew be doing? It scurries,
scratches at the snow with feeble claws,
suddenly stops, sniffing. What is there to sniff?
Then the sun comes out and it disappears:
splashes of light, dazzling droplets everywhere.
Particles of watery light:
maybe the shrew
feeds on such elements, surviving
in the dark of its burrow.
And both are here: gutted matter
and bright limpid light. Opponents
who never parley. Which way to look, you wonder,
which eye to believe, which party to yield to.
Should the mist part, for a moment,
should a gust of icy wind raise the curtain,
there, where chance directs the gaze,
appears, in clarity, a swathe of mountain, but detached
from earth, as if in flight: immense eagle
of black rock and snow, talon and wing.
|
