"Cigola la carrucola del pozzo," by Eugenio Montale, an English version, "The well's pulley creaks," translated by LiteraryJoint

Eugenio Montale, 12 October 1896 – 12 September 1981, recipient of the 1975 Nobel Prize in Literature.

The well's pulley creaks
the water rises to the light and merges with it.
Trembles a memory in the brimming pail,
in the pure circle an image smiles.
I draw a face to evanescent lips, 
the past deforms itself, it grows old,
belongs to someone else...
Ah, how it already screeches
the wheel, it returns you to the gloomy bottom,
vision, a distance divides us.

From "Ossi di seppia" (Cuttlefish Bones), 1925
Translation in English by LiteraryJoint, Copyright © LiteraryJoint by Alessandro Baruffi  
 
Original text, in Italian:

Non chiederci la parola, Do not ask us for the word, by Eugenio Montale, in English

"Ossi di Seppia", cover of the 1925 edition

Do not ask us for the word

 

Do not ask us for the word that gives shape from all angles

to our formless soul, and in letters of fire

declares it, and shines forth like a crocus,

lost in the middle of a dusty field.

Ah, the man who goes on confidently,

to others and to himself a friend,

unfazed by his own shadow which the Dog Star

stamps over a decrepit wall!

Do not demand from us the formula unfolding worlds before you,
rather a few crooked syllables - and dry like a twig.  
That alone today we can tell you,
who we are not, what we do not want.

Eugenio Montale, from "Ossi di Seppia", 1923 


 

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books-the-full-montale-1046186.html

Original text in Italian

Eugenio Montale, 'Spesso il male di vivere', 'The ill of living', English Translation

From "Ossi di seppia" (1925)

Original cover

Spesso il male di vivere...

Spesso il male di vivere ho incontrato:

era il rivo strozzato che gorgoglia,

era l'incartocciarsi della foglia

riarsa, era il cavallo stramazzato.

Bene non seppi, fuori del prodigio

che schiude la divina Indifferenza:

era la statua nella sonnolenza

del meriggio, e la nuvola, e il falco alto levato. 

by Eugenio Montale (1896-1981)

From "Cuttlefish bones" (1925)

Often the ill of living...

Often have I met the ill of living:

it was the choked stream that gurgles,

it was the shriveling of a leaf,

parched, it was the horse, crashed.

Good I have not known, outside the miracle

which discloses divine's Indifference:

it was the statue in the somnolence

of noon, and the cloud, and the lofty hawk.

Translation by A. Baruffi, Literary Joint