JOHN DONNE, IL BUONGIORNO, TRADUZIONE ERMINIA PASSANNANTI

Franco Fortini

 

Translated by Erminia Passannanti

 

'The nest'

 

Mid-March and between the wall and the roof

some birds with yellow hostile beaks

nervous and miserable make their nest of twigs.

When it is deepest night and I cannot sleep

I know that their newborn are behind the wall.

 

In Prague, I read, the noblemen’s severed heads

were embossed in friezes of eagles and gold.

From profound theatres valiant men

now sing. A humming splits the night.

Proud voices invoke Miserere.

 

Inside the nest ignorant creatures

will shiver at their mother's frenzy.

Hunger will shriek, the mother

will teach them all there is to know.

In the ghastly air they will finally fly

and nothing more than this will learn.

 

Illusion has emptied the scenes.

Minute populations have burned alive in the diodes.

I say to my pious mind  - Gather your broken limbs

in this patient ship. Let the body look like

one whole dormant being.

 

But already so many are on their ways

in the greyness of the first light

where the massacre vacillates between ditches

and  waste spaces, so many already offer their necks.

This is the law. This is what can be understood.

Neighbours, my neighbours, stay asleep in your blood.

 

This unspoken destiny which can be understood

Little by little grows clearer in the room.

Waiting for those little ones to wake,

a juvenile form of my consciousness watches

the body all enclosed in his repose.

 

(Poesie Scelte, pp. 85-87, Translation Erminia Passannanti)