Today I was in Monterosso al Mare and drank a lemon squeeze, so I felt inspired to write a translation of Eugenio Montale's poem
I limoni.
Listen, the poets laureate
only move among plants
with little used names: boxes privets or acanthus.
I, for me, love streets that lead on to herbaceous
ditches where in half dry
puddles boys catch
a few sparse eels:
rows that follow embankments,
descend into tufts of canes
and lead to gardens, among the lemon trees.
Better if the birds' ruckuses
fade out swallowed by the blue:
clearer one can listen to the whisper
of friendly branches in the air that almost does not move
and the senses of this smell
that is not able to take off from the ground
and a restless sweetness rains in the chest.
Here of the amused passions
by a miracle the war quiets down,
here even the poor of us are entitled to our share of wealth
and it is the scent of lemons.
See, in these silences where things
give in and seem to be close
to betraying their ultimate secret,
at times one expects
to discover a mistake of Nature,
the dead point of the world, the ring that does not hold,
the thread to be untangled that may finally put us
in the middle of a truth.
Glances search around,
the mind investigates conciliates undoes
in the scent that floods
when the day most languishes.
These are silences during which one sees
in every human shadow that leaves
some disturbed Divinity.
But the illusion lacks and brings us back to time
in the noisy cities where the blue shows up
only piecewise, up high, between the moldings.
The rain tires the earth, then; winter's boredom
thickens over the houses,
the light gets scant - bitter the soul.
When one day out of a door not fully closed
among the trees of a courtyard
we are shown the yellow of lemons;
and our heart's coldness thaws,
and in our chest pour down
their songs
the golden trumpets of sunshine.
