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

Joseph Tusiani / Giosuè Carducci
your human sadness and your bitter ends.
Look! The old sea is calm and blue and wide,
and, look!, the smiling sun to it descends!
‘ This sunset—see—is full of many a flight,
and do you hear the sparrows’ happy fun?
The nightingales will sing again tonight:
oh, stay, and all your evil spirits shun—
“the evil wraiths that from the bottom deep
of these your hearts made weak by thought and sigh
like putrid flames of cemeteries leap
before the glances of the passer-by.
“Stop here, and we, tomorrow, at midday,
when in the shade of mighty oaks again
horses go sniffing for some herb or hay,
and all is hushed along the ardent plain,
“shall sing to you—we cypresses—the chorus
that between earth and heaven ever hails:
and nymphs out of those elms will come before us,
fanning your forehead with their white new veils;
“and deathless Pan, who on the lonely heights
and on the plain around that moment flees,
will plunge, O mortal, all your strident frights
into the vast and godly harmonies.”
And, “Far away,” I answered thus their call,
my Titti waits. Oh, let me, let me go.
My Titti’s like a sparrow, sweet and small,
but for her dress she has no feathers though.. . .”
“What, then, shall we report to your Grandmother
buried in her old grave upon the hill?”
( A black cortege, they went, they hastened rather,
whispering something, running, running still.)
Down from the hillock, from her cemetery,
amid the cypresses’ still verdant row,
Grandma Lucia, then, I seemed to see,
severe and tall, black-clad as long ago....
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