And only briefly then

you touch, you see, you press against

the surface of impenetrable things.

BEWARE OF THINGS IN DUPLICATE

Beware of things in duplicate:

a set of knives, the cufflinks in a drawer,

the dice, the pair of Queens, the eyes

of someone sitting next to you.

Attend that empty minute in the evening

when looking at the clock, you see

its hands are fixed on the same hour

you noticed at your morning coffee.

These are the moments to beware

when there is nothing so familiar

or so close that it cannot betray you:

a twin, an extra key, an echo,

your own reflection in the glass.

ALL SOULS’

Suppose there is no heaven and no hell,

And that the dead can never leave the earth,

That, as the body rots, the soul breaks free,

Weak and disabled in its second birth.

And then invisible, rising to the light,

Each finds a world it cannot touch or hear,

Where colors fade and, if the soul cries out,

The silence stays unbroken in the air.

How flat the ocean seems without its roar,

Without the sting of salt, the bracing gust.

The sunset blurs into a grayish haze.

The morning snowfall is a cloud of dust.

The pines that they revisit have no scent.

They cannot feel the needled forest floor.

Crossing the stream, they watch the current flow

Unbroken as they step down from the shore.

They want their voices to become the wind—

Intangible like them—to match its cry,

Howling in treetops, covering the moon,

Tumbling the storm clouds in a rain-swept sky.

But they are silent as a rising mist,

A smudge of smoke dissolving in the air.

They watch the shadows lengthen on the grass.

The pallor of the rose is their despair.

ON APPROACHING FORTY

The thought pursues me through this dreary town

where the wind sweeps down from the high plateau

and where a diving chimney swift can cut

the slender thread of mountains far away.

So soon come forty years of restlessness,

of tedium, of unexpected joy,

quick as a gust of wind in March is quick

to scatter light and rain. Soon come delays,

snatched from the straining hands of those I love,

torn from my haunts, the customs of my years

suddenly crushed to make me understand.

The tree of sorrow shakes its branches…

The years rise like a swarm around my shoulders.

Nothing has been in vain. This is the work

which all complete together and alone,

the living and the dead, to penetrate

the impenetrable world, down open roads,

down mineshafts of discovery and loss,

and learned from many loves or only one,

from father down to son—till all is clear.

And having said this, I can start out now,

easy in the eternal company

of all things living, of all things dead,

to disappear in either dust or fire

if any fire endures beyond its flame.

(From the Italian of Mario Luzi)