Proofing done, here's the 'Montale'. It's based on 'La casa dei doganieri'
but is in no way a straight translation. I was going to post the Italian too
but am not sure about that copyright matter. Wasn't able to find an English
version of 'A mia moglie', I'm afraid, Erminia.
Dissolving Images: 1939.
You don't remember the shorewatcher's house
that stopped short of the cliff-edge
above a dead reef; which waits for you still,
desolate, since a foreshortened summer
night your thoughts swarmed there.
The south wind kicks like a man in his sleep
as stone falls, your heavy-centered laughter
twists a trembling needle
out of true. Our dice no more add up.
You won't remember; another voice
of time rambles in your mind, a thread
skids off a spool.
I hold to that thread now: but the house
drops away, and a soot-tarred weathervane
spins. I keep a line's end
but you are breathless, as an icon,
inviolate, as an image
on a smoke-glass mirror.
On the fugitive horizon a tanker
waves a red lamp at the fog.
Is this our way through? White breakers
rant, on a cliff's rubbled fall.
You don't remember the house of this,
our broken summer. Or what of us remains.
Or what is gone.
Best
Dave
David Bircumshaw
Leicester, England
Home Page
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