Journal of Italian Translation - Brooklyn College - Academic Home ...

Joseph Tusiani / Giosuè Carducci
At the Source of the Clitumnus
Still from the mountain swaying to the singing
wind with its ash-trees, and all over spreading
upon the breezes a cool scent of woodland
sage and of thyme,
to you in the moist evening, O Clitumnus,
the flocks descend: the Umbrian boy is trying
to dip his struggling sheep in your bright current,
while from the suckling
breast of her sun-bronzed mother who, bare-footed,
sits at the threshold of her cottage, singing,
a nursing baby turns towards him and flashes
a round-face smile:
his loins in goat-skins wrapped, his pensive father,
who seems a faun of ancient days, is guiding
the painted plow and the unending vigor
of his fair oxen—
of his fair oxen, youthful and square-breasted,
with horns high on their heads and moon-resembling,
soft-eyed, and snowy-white, which gentle Virgil
tenderly loved.
Darkening clouds are meanwhile smoking over
the Apennine: austere, and vast, and verdant,
from all the mountains sloping in a circle
Umbria watches.
Green Umbria, hail, and hail, Clitumnus, patron
of this pure fountain! In my heart the pristine
country I feel, and on my brow the breath of
Italy’s gods.
Who brought the shadows of the weeping willow
upon these sacred banks? May soon the stormy
Apennine wind uproot you, soft tree, symbol
of humble days!
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