This poem originally appeared in the February/March 2021 issue of Dream of Italy.
Salvatore Quasimodo was a Sicilian civil engineer, born in Modica, who began writing poetry in his twenties. This poem was published in his first collection “Acque e Terre”, which translates to Waters and Lands, in 1930.
Specchio
Ed ecco sul tronco
si rompono gemme:
un verde più nuovo dell’erba
che il cuore riposa:
il tronco pareva già morto,
piegato sul botro.
E tutto mi sa di miracolo;
e sono quell’acqua di nube
che oggi rispecchia nei fossi
più azzurro il suo pezzo di cielo,
quel verde che spacca la scorza
che pure stanotte non c’era.
Mirror
And suddenly on the trunk
buds break open:
a green newer than the grass
which soothes the heart:
the trunk already seemed dead,
bent on the ravine.
And everything seems like a miracle;
and I’m that rainwater
that today reflects in the ditches
a deeper blue its piece of sky,
that green that splits the crust
which even last night
-Salvatore Quasimodo (1930)