out of the tree
a newer green in the grass
And see, buds break
eases the heart:
And all I know of miracle
;
and I am this watery cloud
And all I know of miracle;
that reflected today in the
ditches,
the more blue, its fragment of
heaven,
this green that splits the bark
that only last night was
not there.
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.”
Salvatore Quasimodo
This poem, entitled “Specchio” (Mirror), was first
published in “Acque e terre” in 1930:
It’s the beginning of spring, the seemingly dry
branches of the trees are starting to get their
first buds. Here's the bark splits, and sprouts
the bud of a bright green, tender, more brilliant
than grass.
It's the life that revives after the long winter
hibernation, and the poet's heart has a sigh of
relief “and the heart is resting,"
All this, for the poet ,is a miracle and he feels part
of nature waking up and of the enchanting
spectacle of a sky bluer than ever that is
reflected in the ditches swollen by rain and in
the green bud that tonight wasn’t there yet.
Salvatore Quasimodo (1901 - 1968) was an Italian poet exponent of
Hermeticism, and has also received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1959.
Quasimodo's poetry reveals his character and thoughtful human. His
obscurity was developed in an original way; Quasimodo in fact adopted a
language gaunt but not devoid of musical nuances and marked by a note
of sadness. His famous poem is “and it is now evening”.
He was born in Modica (Sicily). After completing his
engineering studies in Palermo, Quasimodo travelled around
Italy. He worked for the Department of Civil Engineering, but
started writing poetry in his twenties, and his first important
collection of poems, Acque e terre (Waters and lands), was
published in 1930. Quasimodo was part of the cultural circles
of Firenze, Roma and Milano, and wrote for several literary
magazines. He also translated the works of many different
poets, from the Latin Catullus to the English Shakespeare,
from the Greek Sophocles to the Chilean Neruda. Quasimodo
was in Milano during the Second World war, the horrors of
which he described in the collected poems “Giorno dopo
giorno” (Day after day), published in 1947. He died on the
17th of June 1968 in Napoli.