This is my version of Eugenio Montale's celebrated poem 'Meriggiare pallido e assorto' (original Italian here) , first written in 1916.

The date is significant. Though the poem appears as an anti-idyll, nature poem, it's actually permeated by the carnage of World War I. 

 

Midday torpor, pale and vague

Beside the crumbling garden wall

Hear from the thickets and the thorns,

Snap of blackbird, scatter of snake.

 

Through cracks in the mud, in its wrinkles,

Marauding armies of red ants

Now breaking ranks, now interlinking

To fight over some insignificant mount.

 

Leaves quake as the sea below

Ripples its scales, and starts up 

Cicadas shaking with rage 

Screeching from arid escarpments.

 

Blinded where sun blazes

Shadowed by sad amazement

How our life and labours

Are followed like this path

By a wall of jagged glass. 

 

I

Soon we'll be diving into freezing shadows.

So long the brilliance of summer so short.

Already I hear the ominous echo

Of wood logs knocking on courtyard cobbles.

 

And now Winter will take its toll: anger,

Hatred, shakes, horrors, hard labours, 

Like the sun in its arctic circle of hell,

My heart will congeal to a small red block, frozen.

 

So I quake when I hear the dropping of logs;

More deadly to me than the rap of a scaffold.

My mind is like a castle tower shattered

By a battering ram, relentless, massive..

 

Till I'm rocked by each monotonous blow,

Nails hammered in haste in a coffin,

But for whom? -  yesterday summer, autumn now!

These doom-laden sounds - like a valediction. 

 

II

 

I love your wide eyes, their emerald glint,

Subtle and warm, but I'm cold and bitter.

And nothing, your love, the bed, this fire, beats

A glimpse of sunlight over the sea.

 

Yet you love me regardless: gentle, maternal

Despite my ingratitude, unworthiness;

Lover or sister, you are that short lived bliss

Of a setting sun or a glorious autumn.

 

Cut short! The grave yawns, voraciously.

Oh let me rest my forehead on your knees,

And savour, while missing the white-hot summer,

The soft yellow rays of a dying season. 

 

I'll come to you at midnight with the moon.
By missing you I will find my way.
And though I haven't told you that I'll come
You'll still be there to open up the gate



Despite the dark, you won't ask me who I am.
But you'll touch my hand and know at once.
In the silence I will not say a thing
With rustling words - yet you'll answer back..



Then you'll kiss my pale forehead silently.
And though I won't say what troubles me
You will cradle my head upon your lap
And close my eyes in eternal dream.

Translated by Peter Jukes (with help from Edyta Zalewska) from the polish of Leopold Staff

 

Don't worry; I am here. In the wavering
tone of my voice, can't you hear me?
My desire for you has now taken wing
and circles about your face so palely.

Can't you see it, my soul, standing waiting
cloaked for you in a gown of silence?
Don't you realise that all my longings ripen
on the image of you like fruit on a tree?

If you are the dreamer, then I am your dream.
Might you wish to wake up, I am that might.
And all this splendour makes me shine
and turn myself into the quiet starlight
above the incredible City of Time.

Translated by Peter Jukes from a poem by Rilke

 

I know the force of words, their urgent calling,

not just words that draw polite applause

but words that even the dead find disturbing

break through their graves and walk abroad.

 

Though censors edit or publishers ignore them

words knuckle down, buckle under, keep on, cut through, 

hammering away till express trains come fawning

to lick poetry's rough hands, tame and meek.

 

I know the force of words, like a tissue flung

under dancers heels, they seem empty air,

but man is made of backbone, heart and tongue.

 

Version of a poem by Mayakovsky by Peter Jukes

With this wind our future comes: so let, oh let
It blow. All that compels us without say
And from which we'll be made to glow - all of it
If we can just keep still will find us and bring
The future that comes with this wind.

 

Translated by Peter Jukes from a poem by Rilke

 

I often have this strange and haunting dream

Of an unknown woman I love, who loves me back
And who is, at any moment, not quite the same
Nor entirely other, who loves and understands.

For only she can understand my heart,
Only she alone - oh my troubles disappear,
And the beads of sweat on my pale forehead
Only she alone replenishes with her tears.

Is she brunette, blonde or redhead? I don't know.
Her name? All I know is that it's soft and clear
Like those of loved ones who have long since gone.

Her gaze is like the gaze of a statue's head.
And in her tone - distant, calm, and sad - you can hear
The sound of beloved voices that are dead.

 

Translated by Peter Jukes from Paul Verlaine's Mon Reve Familier

 

 

 

The sky puts on the dark blue gown
held up for it by the avenue of limes;
you watch: the landscape divides
one half heavenward, the other half down;

 

leaving you distinct from either side:
not like the houses, motionless and dark,
nor reaching for infinity like the part
that becomes a star each night and climbs

leaving you to realise in the quiet
how vast is your life is and alone,
how both determined and definite
your heart is at once both star and stone.

 

Translated by Peter Jukes from 'Abend' by Rainer Maria Rilke

 

 

It's always dear to me, this lonely hill.
This hedgerow that happens to obscure
The whole vista of the far horizon;
Sitting here, observing - through the endless
Spaces beyond - and the unnatural
Quiet and stillness all around,
I lose myself in my thoughts, and this heart
Misses a beat. A breeze ruffles
The branches. When I hear it and compare
The lonely voice of the leaves to the vast
Cacophony of silence without, I remember
The eternal, the dead seasons, the living
Moments and the murmurs they make, until
My thoughts are drowned out by infinity:
And how sweet it is to be shipwrecked like this.

Translated from the Italian of Giacoma Leopardi by Peter Jukes

Without saying good bye
People leave us,
Without saying good bye
Emotions go,

Without a bye or leave
The seasons pass
Like this:

Without saying good bye

 

2005 Peter Jukes:
translated (with help from Edyta Zalewska) from the Polish of Julia Hartwig