Ashes
of dead things, of lost evils,
ineffable contacts, mute
sighing;
vivid
flames assault and cause in me
anxiety upon anxiety I approach the threshold
of sleep;
and sleep
with those passionate and tender ties
that year the baby and mother, and to you, ashes,
I merge.
Anguish
trapped in the passageway, I disarm it. Like
a blessed path to heaven,
I climb a stairway, stopped at a door
where I played in another era. Time
has surrendered in shock.
I feel myself
in tatters and with the soul then,
in a flash of lightning; to the heart
a joy batters whirling
as at the end.
But I don’t cry out.
Mute
I’m leaving the shadows for the vast empire.
Umberto Saba
Worked from the Italian Ceneri, 1933
Malcolm D B Munro
Sunday 10 April, 2016
Copyright of the original is retained by the Copyright owner. The Copyright of this Translation is vested with the Author. The original, from which this translation is made, is used under the provisions of Section 107 of the US Copyright Act 1976, which allows for fair use of the original for translation purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research.
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