Giuseppe Ungaretti "The Rivers" (I Fiumi), English translation. Giuseppe Ungaretti, the Master of Hermeticism, Translated in English

Picture of the poet Giuseppe Ungaretti (1888 - 1970)

The most comprehensive English translation of the work of Giuseppe Ungaretti (1888 – 1970,) the leading representative of the experimental literary movement called Hermeticism, or Hermetic poetry. This edition includes poems from all of his major collections: "Porto Sepolto (1916,) “L'allegria di naufragi” (1919,)"L'allegria" (1931,) “Sentimento del tempo” (1933,) and "Il dolore," (1947.)

Available as ebook as Amazon Kindle and Kobo.

The Rivers (I Fiumi)

 
I hold onto this tree that is mutilated
Abandoned in this sinkhole (*)
Which has the languor
Of a circus
Before or after the show
And look
The quite passing
Of the clouds on the moon

This morning I lay down
In an urn of water
And like a relic
I rested

The river Isonzo flowing
Polished me
Like one of its stones
I pulled up my poor bones
And there I went
Like an acrobat
On the water 

I crouched down
Next to my clothes
Filthy with war
And like a Bedouin
I stooped to receive
The sun


This is the Isonzo
And here better
I recognized myself
A docile fiber
Of the universe

My torment
Is when
I feel I’m not
In harmony

But those occult
Hands
That I’m soaked with
Grant me
The rare
Happiness

I observed again
The epochs
Of my life

These are
My rivers

This is the Serchio
From which have drawn water
Over two thousands years perhaps
My own farmer ancestors
And my father and my mother

This is the Nile
Which saw me
Being born and grow
And burn with unawareness
In the expanded plains

This is the Seine
And in its muddiness
I have stirred up
And got to know myself

These are my rivers
Counted in the Isonzo

This is my melancholy
That in each one
Shines through
Now that the night fell
And that my life appears to me
A corolla
Of gloom

(*) In Italian “dolina,” a cavity in the ground, especially in a limestone formation, caused by water erosion and providing a route for surface water to disappear underground.

Cotici, 16^th of August 1916, from the collection “L'Allegria,” 1931.

The most comprehensive English translation of the work of Giuseppe Ungaretti (1888 – 1970,) the leading representative of the experimental literary movement called Hermeticism, or Hermetic poetry. This edition includes poems from all of his major collections: "Porto Sepolto (1916,) “L'allegria di naufragi” (1919,)"L'allegria" (1931,) “Sentimento del tempo” (1933,) and "Il dolore," (1947.)

Available as ebook as Amazon Kindle and Kobo.

 

Gabriele D’Annunzio's "The Rain in the Pinewood" (La Pioggia nel Pineto, by Gabriele D'Annunzio, from the collection "Alcyone", 1902)

Gabriele D’Annunzio: The Collection of Poems in English. The most comprehensive English translation of the poetry of Gabriele D'Annunzio.   Available as eBook on Amazon Kindle and Kobo, and as printed edition on Amazon and Lulu. 

The Rain in the Pinewood

Be silent. At the edge

of the wood I do not hear

the human words you say;

I hear newer words

spoken by droplets and leaves

far away. 

Listen. It rains

from the scattered clouds.

It rains on the briny, burned

tamarisk,

it rains on the pine trees

scaly and rough,

it rains on the divine

myrtle,

on the bright genista flowers

gathered together,

on the junipers full of

fragrant berries,

it rains on our sylvan faces,

it rains on our bare hands

on our light clothes,

on the fresh thoughts

that our soul, renewed,

liberates,

on the beautiful fable

that beguiled you yesterday,

that beguiles me today,

oh Hermione.

  

Can you hear?

The rain falls

on the solitary vegetation

with a crackling noise that lasts

and varies in the air

according to the thicker,

less thick foliage. 

Listen.

With their singing, the cicadas

are answering this weeping,

this southern wind weeping

that does not frighten them,

and nor does the grey sky.

And the pine tree

has a sound, the myrtle

another one, the juniper

yet another, different

instruments

under countless fingers. 

And we are immersed

in the sylvan spirit,

living the same

sylvan life;

and your inebriated face

is soft from the rain,

like a leaf,

and your hair

is fragrant like the light

genista flowers,

oh terrestrial creature

called Hermione.

  

Listen, listen!

The song of the flying cicadas

becomes fainter and fainter

as the weeping grows stronger;

but a rougher song

rises from afar,

and flows in

from the humid remote shadow.

Softer and softer

gets weaker, fades away.

One lonely note

still trembles, fades away.

No one can hear the voice of the sea.

Now you can hear the silver rain

pouring in

on the foliage,

rain that purifies,

its roar that varies

according to the thicker,

less thick foliage.

Listen.

The child of the air is silent;

but the child

of the miry swamp, the frog,

far away,

sings in the deepest of shadows

who knows where, who knows where!

And it rains on your lashes,

Hermione.

It rains on your black lashes

as if you were weeping,

weeping from joy; not white

but almost green,

you seem to come out of the bark.

And life is in us fresh

and fragrant,

the heart in our chests is like a peach

untouched

under the eyelids our eyes

are like springs in the grass

and the teeth in our mouths

green almonds.

And we go from thicket to thicket,

at a time together, at a time apart

(the vegetation, thick and vigorous,

entwines our ankles

entangles our knees)

who knows where, who knows where!

And it rains on our sylvan faces,

it rains on our bare hands

on our light clothes,

on the fresh thoughts

that our soul, renewed, liberates,

on the beautiful fable

that beguiled me yesterday,

that beguiles you today,

oh Hermione.

Gabriele D’Annunzio: The Collection of Poems in English. The most comprehensive English translation of the poetry of Gabriele D'Annunzio.   Available as eBook on Amazon Kindle and Kobo, and as printed edition on Amazon and Lulu.