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

Joseph Tusiani / Giosuè Carducci
See with what longing all those hills reach out
to the last light their arms:
the growing shadow girds them, and they ask
for one more kiss, O Lydia
Giver of joy, O Bacchus, for your kisses
I, shadow-won, ask too:
now that Hyperion falls, O radiant Lydia,
your eyes I now implore.
Oh, how the hour elapses! Rosy mouth,
unclose: flower of the soul,
flower of desire, open your petals, quick:
open, beloved arms.
At the Station, One Morning in Autumn
How those street-lamps pursue each other
behind those trees most lazily,
‘mid branches all dripping with rain
yawning their light on the mud!
Wailing, and sharp, and shrilling, near us
the train is whistling. Leaden,
the sky, and the sad autumn morning
are around us—a phantom immense.
Where and to what are these men moving,
silent and muffled, bound for their dark
coaches? To what unknown griefs,
to what torments of far-away hopes?
Pensive, O Lydia, you give your ticket
to the conductor, who punches it;
give the years and the bliss that have fled,
and your memories, to pressing time.
Hooded in black, along the black
wagons the railmen come and go
like shadows; they have a dim lantern,
and carry iron hammers: the iron
brakes, tested, answer with a long, lonely,
lugubrious moan: from the soul’s depth
an echo of sorrowful boredom
replies, and is perhaps despair.
The sound of every slammed-shut door is
165