“Anche durante questo viaggio . . .”
POESIA
di Giovanni Raboni
Anche durante questo viaggio
e più ancora del solito
senza rendermi conto del perché
ho sorvegliato mossa dopo mossa
un tale—uno, stavolta, che è poi sceso
alla fermata d’una cittadina
dove da vari indirizi era probabile
che fosse nato e dove
comunque sicuramente abitava
e da dove si poteva pensare
che fosse partito il mattino
per andare al lavoro
da quell pendolare che m’era parso
sin dalla prima occhiata.
Era tardi, ma un tardi quasi estivo
e a verderlo sparire
non so se per ombra o per luce
lungo il viale al di là della stazione
avevo il cuore gonfio di che cosa:
di non essere lui?
di non camminare al suo posto
in quell chiarore indeclinabile
verso una casa forse bianca
con davanti, forse, un po’ di giardino?
Su queste domande m’affaccio
come a cercarmi in un specchio oscuro.
“Again on this trip . . .”
POETRY
by Giovanni Raboni
Again on this trip
and more often than usual
without knowing why
I watch every gesture
of certain people—this time, a man
who gets out at a station in a small town
that he seems most likely
to have been born in and where
he undoubtedly lives
and where it is probable
he left in the morning
to commute to work,
or so it seemed from my quick impression.
It was late but almost a summertime lateness
and seeing him disappear—
I don’t know if it was in the shadows or in the light—
along the wide street beyond the station
suddenly my heart was filled with something:
was it not being him?
or not to be walking instead of him
in that unavoidable glow
toward a house, perhaps white,
that had in front of it, maybe, a bit of a garden?
These questions I turn over in my mind
as if searching for myself in a dark mirror.
(translated from the Italian by Zack Rogow)
Giovanni Raboni was the author of more than twenty collections of poetry in Italian. His work has appeared in English in Every Third Thought: Poems 1950–2004, translated by Michael Palma and published by Chelsea Editions. Raboni was also a highly accomplished literary translator who created the Italian version of Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, as well as many of the classics of nineteenth and twentieth century literature, from Flaubert’s Three Tales to Apollinaire’s Alcohols to Baudelaire’s The Flowers of Evil. He lived from 1932 to 2004. “Anche durante questo viaggio . . .” (“Again on this trip . . .”) originally appeared in Italian in Tutte le poesie: 1949–2004, a book of poems by Giovanni Raboni, which was published in Italy by Giulio Einaudi editore in 2014.
Zack Rogow is the author, editor, or translator of twenty books or plays. He was a co-winner of the PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Award for Earthlight by André Breton, and winner of a Bay Area Book Reviewers Award (BABRA) for his translation of George Sand’s novel, Horace. Rogow’s co-translation of Shipwrecked on a Traffic Island and Other Previously Untranslated Gems by Colette was published by SUNY Press. Rogow’s English version of Colette’s novel Green Wheat was published by Sarabande Books and nominated for the PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Award and for the Northern California Book Award in translation.
◄ Previous page | Return to the table of contents for the Apple Valley Review, Vol. 16, No. 1 (Spring 2021) | Next page ►