☀ What Sparks Poetry: Taije Silverman on "The Meteor"

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November 30, 2020

What Sparks Poetry is a serialized feature that explores experiences and ideas that spark the writing of new poems. In our fifth series, What Translation Sparks, a group of poet-translators share a seminal experience in translation. Each Monday's delivery brings you the poem and an excerpt from the essay.

The Meteor

Giovanni Pascoli
Translated from the Italian by Taije Silverman

Blackout. Above me the sky shone a pale, clear blue.
No one was there, no one near— except you,
faraway Rio Salto, who flowed past my home.
I didn’t hear you. All I heard was your road crew
of frogs, out announcing the water and always
more water to pulp mills and farms.
I thought of the past. I recalled how,
at twenty, still fearful of life, I felt I’d die too
in some blood-spattered way. And alone,
late at night, I would come to this path
where my enemy might lie in wait in the dark.
I walked slowly, so slowly, my heart
in my throat while I feigned perfect calm
so he would see I was brave (though
I’d startle at wind, or a firefly’s spark):
slowly, I crept, and my heart leapt ahead.
And what then? A crash—laid out flat
on the path, I’d be gasping, alone . . .
but not alone. The graveyard is near.
Memorial lamps dimly kindling stones.
My mother would come, a hand
brushing my skin, and I’d feel her tears
on my wound like cool dew in the dark.
The others, too, will draw nearer
and gather me up from the path
and with faint cries, they’ll carry me off
to their land, and they’ll care for me
there—where you smile unending
above your sloped pallet now padded
with mosses and grass, like a nest.
And musing I heard (beyond grapevines
and next to the edge of a ditch, by an elm)
a rough hiss, and a flash, a blast . . . blasting
open, and glowing, and falling, fallen
from the infinite flicker of stars:
a globe of gold that dove mutely toward fields
as if diving toward empty layers of mist,
itself empty as mist—and inside
its instant, it lit all the hedges
and trenches and huts, and clusters
of forest, and night-drifting rivers
and the white, towered towns in the distance.
Enraptured, I asked: Did you see?
But there was only the sky, high and serene.
Not the sound of a step, or silhouette.
The sky, nothing more: dark sky,
surging with huge stars; a sky in which
it seemed the world had been submerged.
And I felt the earth inside the universe.
Shaking, I felt earth as part of the sky. And saw
myself down here, bewildered and small,
wandering on a star among stars.
Il bolide
Tutto annerò. Brillava, in alto in alto,
il cielo azzurro. In via con me non c’eri,
in lontananza, se non tu, Rio Salto.
Io non t’udiva: udivo i cantonieri
tuoi, le rane, gridar rauche l’arrivo
d’acqua, sempre acqua, a maceri e poderi.
Ricordavo. A’ miei venti anni, mal vivo,
pensai tramata anche per me la morte
nel sangue. E, solo, a notte alta, venivo
per questa via, dove tra l’ombre smorte
era il nemico, forse. Io lento lento
passava, e il cuore dentro battea forte.
Ma colui non vedrebbe il mio spavento,
sebben tremassi all’improvviso svolo
d’una lucciola, a un sibilo di vento:
lento lento passavo: e il cuore a volo
andava avanti. E che dunque? Uno schianto;
e su la strada rantolerei, solo . . .
no, non solo! Lì presso è il camposanto,
con la sua fioca lampada di vita.
Accorrerebbe la mia madre in pianto.
Mi sfiorerebbe appena con le dita:
le sue lagrime, come una rugiada
nell’ombra, sentirei su la ferita.
Verranno gli altri, e me di su la strada
porteranno con loro esili gridi
a medicare nella lor contrada,
così soave! dove tu sorridi
eternamente sopra il tuo giaciglio
fatto di muschi e d’erbe, come i nidi!
Mentre pensavo, e già sentìa, sul ciglio
del fosso, nella siepe, oltre un filare
di viti, dietro un grande olmo, un bisbiglio
truce, un lampo, uno scoppio . . . ecco scoppiare
e brillare, cadere, esser caduto,
dall’infinito tremolìo stellare,
un globo d’oro, che si tuffò muto
nelle campagne, come in nebbie vane,
vano; ed illuminò nel suo minuto
siepi, solchi, capanne, e le fiumane
erranti al buio, e gruppi di foreste,
e bianchi ammassi di città lontane.
Gridai, rapito sopra me: Vedeste?
Ma non v’era che il cielo alto e sereno.
Non ombra d’uomo, non rumor di péste.
Cielo, e non altro: il cupo cielo, pieno
di grandi stelle; il cielo, in cui sommerso
mi parve quanto mi parea terreno.
E la Terra sentii nell’Universo.
Sentii, fremendo, ch’è del cielo anch’ella.
E mi vidi quaggiù piccolo e sperso
errare, tra le stelle, in una stella.

from the book SELECTED POEMS OF GIOVANNI PASCOLI / Princeton University Press

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What Sparks Poetry:
Taije Silverman on "The Meteor"
“'The Meteor' starts in the far past, with a blackout: “tutto annerò.” Annerò—that’s the past remote, a tense that doesn't exist in English. It indicates a past so far past that the present can’t touch it. But Pascoli means to infiltrate, undermine it—which is part of what compels me about the poem. It’s what compels me about translation, too: this vibrant failure of equivalence that brings the past into the present and present into the past."

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January 18-23, 2021
We are pledged to create an extraordinary week of virtual poetry workshops and events for you in the safety of your home. Workshop Faculty: David Baker, Laure-Anne Bosselaar, Traci Brimhall, Eduardo C. Corral, Vievee Francis, Kevin Prufer, Martha Rhodes & Tim Seibles, and more! Apply today!

"I Want to Awaken the Poets"
Acclaimed Chicago poet, Angela Jackson, is the new Poet Laureate of Illinois. "Poetry, she says, 'psychically empowers people' and puts 'them in touch with their selves so that they know their own worth and power, and gain some measure of their lives, and know who they can be and what they can do in the world.'"
via CHICAGO SUN-TIMES

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