by Eugenio Montale （Translated by Lee Gerlach）

    Hear me a moment. Laureate poets

    seem to wander among plants

    no one knows： boxwood， acanthus，

    where nothing is alive to touch.

    I prefer small streets that falter¹

    into grassy² ditches where a boy，

    searching in the sinking puddles³，

    might capture a struggling eel⁴.

    The little path that winds down

    along the slope plunges⁵ through cane-tufts

    and opens suddenly into the orchard⁶

    among the moss-green trunks

    of the lemon trees.

    Perhaps it is better

    if the jubilee⁷ of small birds

    dies down， swallowed in the sky，

    yet more real to one who listens，

    the murmur⁸ of tender leaves

    in a breathless， unmoving air.

    The senses are graced with an odor

    filled with the earth.

    It is like rain in a troubled breast，

    sweet as an air that arrives

    too suddenly and vanishes.

    A miracle is hushed； all passions

    are swept aside. Even the poor

    know that richness，

    the fragrance⁹ of the lemon trees.

    You realize that in silences

    things yield and almost betray

    their ultimate secrets.

    At times， one half expects

    to discover an error in Nature，

    the still point of reality，

    the missing link that will not hold，

    the thread we cannot untangle

    in order to get at the truth.

    You look around. Your mind seeks，

    makes harmonies， falls apart

    in the perfume， expands

    when the day wearies away.

    There are silences in which one watches

    in every fading human shadow

    something divine let go.

    The illusion wanes¹⁰， and in time we return

    to our noisy cities where the blue

    appears only in fragments

    high up among the towering shapes.

    Then rain leaching¹¹ the earth.

    Tedious， winter burdens the roofs，

    and light is a miser¹²， the soul bitter.

    Yet， one day through an open gate，

    among the green luxuriance of a yard，

    the yellow lemons fire

    and the heart melts，

    and golden songs pour

    into the breast

    from the raised cornets of the sun.

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