Corrado Govoni

 

Acquazzone

 

Di nubi grigie a un tratto il cielo fu sporco;
e il tuono brontolò con la voce d’orco.
Si cacciò avanti, lungo lo stradone,
carta foglie ed uccelli il polverone.
Si udirono richiami disperati,
tonfi d’imposte e d’usci sbatacchiati.
Si vider donne lottare in un prato
con gli angeli impauriti del bucato.
Poi seminò la pioggia a piene mani
tetti e vie di danzanti tulipani;
tagliò il paesaggio, illividì ogni cosa
in un polverìo d’acqua luminosa.
Quando si stava inebetiti e fissi
come sull’orlo di infuocati abissi
dove il mondo pareva andar sommerso;
il cielo sulle case era già terso,
e nei vetri appannati del tinello
risorrise il paese ad acquarello:
sulla campagna dolcemente crespa
ronzò la chiesa d’oro come vespa.
Non rimaneva dell’orrendo schianto
che il gocciare di musicale pianto
della gronda, già buono già tranquillo;
lo raccolse morente il bruno grillo.
Coi tamburini gracili di pelle
le rane lo portarono alle stelle.

 


Downpour

translated from the Italian by Paula Bohince

Gray clouds, suddenly the sky was dirty,
and thunder rumbled in the voice of an ogre.
He drove along the main road;
in papery leaves and fussing birds
were heard desperate calls,
thudding shutters and slamming doors.
There were women fighting in a meadow
with fearsome laundry-angels.
Then the rain doused
roofs and streets, tulips dancing,
everything illuminated in the landscape,
held in a dusty cloud of bright water
dazed and fixed
as on the brink of Hell.
Just when the world seemed to go underwater
the sky over the houses cleared;
fogged the windows of the parlor,
the country watercolored:
countryside gently crinkled;
the gold church buzzing like a wasp
as after a horrendous crash,
a teary trickle like music,
the eaves already clear, already quiet.
A dying brown cricket
lay on the water’s frail drum skin.
The frogs took him to Heaven.

 

 


 

Siepe

All’odore crudele
che viene dalle spine della siepe
il tuo sangue amareggia l’amore,
e ti diventan gli occhi
una luce cattiva pigiata.
Sulla tua statua che cammina
aprendo una nuova strada nel vento
invano battono le mie parole
come gocce di rugiada da me scossa.
Prego l’erba dell’argine ti venga incontro
con la lampada avvelenata del gigaro
per far soffrire la tua bocca rossa.

 


 

Hedge

translated from the Italian by Paula Bohince

A cruel smell
comes from the hedge’s thorns.
In your love-sickness,
they become grotesque eyes,
the light badly crushed.
Your mortified body walks
by opening new roads in wind,
words flying to no listener,
like dew drops shaken off.
Please, let there be in the grass
a torch of poisonous cuckoo pint
for your red mouth.

 

 


Corrado Govoni was born in 1884 in Tamara, Italy. He is considered the father of the literary movement of Crepuscularism, literally meaning “Twilight” and concerning itself with humble subjects, melancholy, and introspection. He also wrote novels, stories, and plays. He died near Rome in 1965.

Paula Bohince is the author of three collections of poetry from Sarabande, Swallows and Waves (2016), The Children (2012), and Incident at the Edge of Bayonet Woods (2008).  She received second prize in the 2013 National Poetry Competition and is the 2020 John Montague International Poetry Fellow at University College Cork.


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