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

Joseph Tusiani / Giosuè Carducci
the misty Apennine to them was chamber:
clouds veiled their mighty kiss, and thus they started
Italy’s race.
Now all is silent, O bereaved Clitumnus,
all: of your many lovely temples only
one still remains, but you’re not sitting in it,
robed in your toga.
No longer, sprinkled with your sacred waters,
do bulls, proud victims, carry Roman trophies
to the ancestral shrines! Ah, Rome no longer
is triumphing.
No more she triumphs since a Galilean
with russet hair, the Capitol ascending,
thrust on her back a cross, and ordered: “Carry it,
and be my slave?’
Weeping, the nymphs fled fast to hide in rivers
and in the bark of their own native forests;
or wailing, as clouds fading to the mountains,
they fled away,
when an odd throng amid the shattered columns
and through the whiteness of marauded temples
slowly advanced, cloaked in black sacks, and singing
slow litanies,
and of the fields that sang with human labor,
and of the hills that still recalled an empire
they made a desert, which they named forever
Kingdom of God.
They snatched young men from sacred ploughs, from aged
and waiting fathers, and from still fresh spouses;
wherever the divine hright sun was blessing,
they cast a curse.
Casting a curse upon the zest and fervor
of life and love, they only longed for horrid
communions with their God through pain and sorrow,
on cliffs, in caves;
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