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
