Saturday, March 2, 2019

LEOPARDI ~








L'Infinito / Infinitive


I've always loved this lonesome hill

And this hedge that hides

The entire horizon, almost, from sight.

But sitting here in a daydream, I picture

The boundless spaces away out there, silences

Deeper than human silence, an unfathomable high

In which my heart is hardly a beat

From fear. And hearing the wind

Rush rustling through these bushes,

I pit its speech against infinite silence —

And a notion of eternity floats to mind,

And the dead seasons, and the season

Beating here and now, and the sound of it. So

In this immensity my thoughts all drown,

And it's easeful to be wrecked in seas like these.

translated by Eamon Grennan


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Giacomo Leopardi (1798-1837)
Selected Poems
Princeton University 1997