The Ellipseby Leonardo Sinisgalli
Translated by W.S. Di Piero
Princeton University Press (1982)
The Lockert Library of Poetry in Translation
Like so many essential poetry collections, The Ellipse, sadly, is out of print. But don't despair, this landmark translation by poet and essayist W.S. Di Piero is floating around in used editions at The Olives of Oblivion-approved abebooks from 5 to 25 dollars.
Sinisgalli (1908-1981) is a big-hearted Italian poet, one who's unafraid to give himself over to the beauty, music, and ugliness of quotidian street life. Like Emerson's transparent eyeball, the poet leaps out of himself to float through the world, gathering up every scrap of common existence.
This is not to suggest that Sinisgalli is a populist poet, nor is it to suggest that he's strictly a poet of people and place. Indeed, Sinisgalli's is a personal voice emanating from a singular source. The poems he wrote near the end of his life are much more brief, philosophical, and inward-looking than his early- and mid-career efforts. Hats off to W.S. Di Piero for showcasing Sinisgalli's range. Here's a piece written late in the poet's life:
IN SICKNESS
He falls out of bed
terrified that they
might be burying him.
He drags himself
through the darkness behind his chair
toward the kitchen. He hears
the dark thumping of firewood
heaped high in the cellar.
And here, for The Olives of Oblivion's money, is the shining star of the collection, "Lucania." This poem appears in the 1927-1947 portion of the book:
LUCANIA
To the pilgrim crossing its frontiers,
moving down through the Alburni pass
or following the sheep-track on the slopes of the Serra,
to the kite snapping the horizon line
with a snake in its claws, to the emigrant, to the soldier,
whoever comes back from refuge or exile, whoever sleeps
in sheep pens, to the shepherd, sharecropper, and salesman
Lucania opens its barren plains,
its valleys where rivers crawl
like rivers of dust.
The spirit of silence is everywhere
in my grieving province. From Elea to Metaponto,
sophistical and golden, baffling and sly,
it drinks the holy oil in churches, goes hooded
in houses, dresses as a monk in caves, grows
with the grass on the outskirts of old crumbling villages.
The sun slanting on laurel, the good
bighorned sun, tongue of sweet light,
sun greedy for children, here in the piazzas!
It trudges like an ox, and on the grass
and stones it leaves enormous stains
swarming with ghosts.
Land of huge mamas, of fathers dark
and radiant as skeletons, overrun by roosters
and dogs, woods and limestone, lean
land where the grain toils miserably
(wheat, corn, semolina)
and the wine is dark and chewy (mint
from Agri, basil from the Basento!)
and olives taste of oblivion,
flavor of sorrow.
In volcanic tinderbox air
the trees weirdly throb and breathe,
oak trunks fatten with the essence of heaven.
Heaps of rubble lie untouched for centuries:
nobody dares turn over a stone, afraid of the horror.
I know hell's navel lies under every stone.
Only a boy can lean over the edge
of the abyss and scoop nectar
from the shoot-clusters swarming with mosquitos
and tarantulas.
I'll come back, alive under your red rain,
I'll come back, guiltless, to beat the drum,
to tie my mule to the gate,
to catch snails in the garden.
Will I see the smoking stubble, the brushwood,
the ditches? Will I hear the blackbird singing
under the beds, and the cat
singing on the graves?
Speaking of gathering the scraps of common existence, check out Di Piero's essay, "Pocketbook and Sauerkraut" from his collection Shooting the Works: On Poetry and Pictures (TriQuarterly Books, 1996).
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