Two Poems by Eugenio Montale
Both of these poems are from The Storm & Other Poems (my copy is a slick little book: black and white cover design from Gustave Dore's illustrations to Dante's Inferno ). ON THE GREVE Now a glance no longer sustains me as once it did, when you would lean out at my whistle and I could hardly see you. A boulder, a deep, splayed furrow, the black flight of a swallow, a lid clamped on the cauldron of the world . . . Bread to me is that velvet bud which opens out to a mandolin's glissando, water your rustle flowing; your deep, deep breath is wine. SYRIA The ancients said that poetry is a stairway to God. Maybe it isn't so if you read me. But I knew it the day that I found the voice for you again, loosed in a flock of clouds and goats bursting out of a ravine to browse the slaver of thorn and bulrush; the lean faces of the moon and sun became one face, the car was broken down and an arrow of blood on a boulder pointed the way to Aleppo. [...