Salvatore Quasimodo
(1901-1968)
MARCH WIND (AFTER QUASIMODO)
I will know nothing of my life but its mysteries,
the dead cycles of the breath and sap.
I shall not know whom I loved, or love
now that in the random winds of March
I am nothing but my limbs. I fall
into myself, and the years numbered in me.
The thin blossom is already streaming from my boughs.
I watch the pure calm of its only flight.
trans. Don Paterson
