ALMANAC
The indifferent rivers
Will keep on flowing to the sea
Or ruinously overflowing dikes,
Ancient handiwork of determined men.
The glaciers will continue to grate,
Smoothing what lies beneath them.
Or suddenly fall headlong,
Cutting short fir trees' lives.
The sea, captive between
Two continents, will go on struggling,
Always miserly with its riches.
Sun, stars, planets and comets
Will continue on their course.
Earth too will fear the immutable
Laws of the universe.
Not us. We, rebellious offspring
With great brainpower, little sense,
Will destroy, defile,
Always more feverishly.
Very soon we will extend the desert
Into the Amazon forests,
Into the living heart of our cities,
Into our very hearts.
2 January 1987
translated by Ruth Feldman
Born in Turin Italy and dying there only a few months after writing the poem above, Primo Levi's poetry is probably less known than all of his other writings rich as memoirs, fiction and non-fiction. His slender Collected Poems roughly begins from his Auschwitz captivity, where Elie Wiesel commented at the time of Levi's death (disputed suicide) in 1987 , that "Primo Levi died at Auschwitz forty years earlier." Nonetheless, Levi's poetry speaks for endless time.
[& unable to help myself, here is another from a year earlier]
PROXY
Don't be afraid if the work is hard:
You who are less tired are needed.
Since your senses are fine-tuned, you hear
The hollow sound under your feet.
Consider our mistakes again:
We have also had among us
Someone who set about searching blindly
The way a blindfolded man repeats an outline,
Someone who set sail like the pirates,
And someone who tried his very best.
Help, insecure one. Try, though you're insecure,
Because you're insecure. See
If you can repress the annoyance and disgust
Of our doubts and certainties.
Never have we been so rich and yet
We live in the midst of embalmed monsters,
Other monsters obscenely alive.
Don't be dismayed by the rubble,
Or the stench of refuse dumps: we
Cleared them up with our bare hands
In the years when we were your age.
Continue the race, as best you can. We have
Combed the comets' mane,
Deciphered the secrets of origins,
Trampled the moon's sand,
Built Auschwitz and destroyed Hiroshima.
See: we have not remained inactive.
Take up the cause, perplexed one;
Don't call us teachers.
24 June 1986
[& unable to help myself, here is another from a year earlier]
PROXY
Don't be afraid if the work is hard:
You who are less tired are needed.
Since your senses are fine-tuned, you hear
The hollow sound under your feet.
Consider our mistakes again:
We have also had among us
Someone who set about searching blindly
The way a blindfolded man repeats an outline,
Someone who set sail like the pirates,
And someone who tried his very best.
Help, insecure one. Try, though you're insecure,
Because you're insecure. See
If you can repress the annoyance and disgust
Of our doubts and certainties.
Never have we been so rich and yet
We live in the midst of embalmed monsters,
Other monsters obscenely alive.
Don't be dismayed by the rubble,
Or the stench of refuse dumps: we
Cleared them up with our bare hands
In the years when we were your age.
Continue the race, as best you can. We have
Combed the comets' mane,
Deciphered the secrets of origins,
Trampled the moon's sand,
Built Auschwitz and destroyed Hiroshima.
See: we have not remained inactive.
Take up the cause, perplexed one;
Don't call us teachers.
24 June 1986
