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Poetry by Carl Selph

Page 23

"E il naufragar m'è dolce in questo mare."
                       --  Giacomo Leopardi

 

 

 

To Himself

(a translation of "A se stesso" by Giacomo Leopardi)

 

 
 
Now rest, tired heart,
Forever rest.  The last deceit is dead
I thought would always last.
Gone even are the hope and the desire
For darling cheats.  Forever rest.
For far too long you beat,
Your labor valueless.  The world's
Not worth a sigh,
And life is tedium and grief and bitterness.
The Earth is mire.
Rest quiet now, despair just this last time.
Fate grants to those like us one thing:
To die.  And now you may despise
Yourself, Nature--that brutish, hidden power
That ordains a common doom--
and the infinite futility of all.
      

Translation © Carl Selph, 1999
                     

 

 

To the Moon

(a translation of "Alla Luna" by Giacomo Leopardi)

 

      
 
O gracious moon, again I call to mind
Here on this hill a year ago, anguished,
I came to look at you.  You hung as now
Above the wood, bathing it all in light,
But dim and tremulous your misty face
Seen through my lashes wet with rising tears--
My life full of travail, as it still is.
Nothing has changed, beloved moon.  And yet,
Remembering is a balm, and reckoning
The cycles of my pain.  When one is young,
When long's the road for hope, for memory brief,
The summoning of things long past is sweet,
Though they were sad and though the pain endures.
      

Translation © Carl Selph, 1999
                     

 

The Infinite

(a translation of "L'Infinito" by Giacomo Leopardi)

 

 
 
 
I've always loved this hermit's hill,
the hedgerow here that mostly hides the view
of where, far off, earth meets the sky.
But sitting, gazing, I can dream
unbounded spaces past that line
and suprahuman silences,
a final depth of quietness,
where for a little while the heart
is not afraid.  And as I hear the wind
gust through these woods, I set that voice
against the blue, still infinite:
then I can raise eternity
and times long dead, the present live--
the sounds of it.  And so it is
in that immensity my thought is drowned,
and it is sweet to me to founder in that sea. 
      

Translation © Carl Selph, 1999
                     
                     

To the Evening

(a translation of "Alla Sera" by Ugo Foscolo)

 

 

Maybe because for unending fatal quiet
You are the herald, dear you come to me,
O Evening!  When buoyant summer clouds
And calm spring zephyrs pay you court
      
And when you call upon the world unquiet
Long shadows from the snowy air, always
You descend invoked, and on the hidden
Cords of my heart softly lay your hold.
      
You force my thought to wander on the paths
Leading to the eternal void, and all the while
These evil times fleet by, bearing away the horde
      
Of cares consuming time and me.
And as I contemplate your peace, the soul
Of the warrior roaring within me sleeps.
      

Translation © Carl Selph, 1999
                     

All text on this page is copyrighted by Carl Selph and appears here by permission. All rights reserved. It may not be archived beyond one personal electronic copy for offline reading; such a copy must include the entire text of the present notice and the author's name. It may not be printed, posted on a web-site, distributed publicly or privately, used or quoted in whole or in part, or published in any manner or form whatsoever without the author's explicit permission. E-mail Wordreign to contact Carl Selph and your request will be promptly forwarded.

 

 

 

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