Vnwilling to bend my knees
To such unmantled pride
As
left you in that place,
Restless, unsatisfied.
Robert Mezey
AGAIN A GREEN RIVER
Again a green river plunders me
and accord of grass and poplars,
where the gleam of dead snow is forgotten.
And here within the night, mild lamb
has howled with head of blood:
there floods, in that outcry, the time
of the long wolves of winter,
of the well, homeland of thunder.
THE SCRAWNY FLOWER ALREADY FLIES
I shall know nothing of my life,
obscure monotonous blood.
I shall not know whom I have loved, whom I do love
now that here-straitened, lessened to my limbs–
in the wasted wind of March
I enumerate the evils of deciphered days.
The scrawny flower already flies
from the branches. And I wait
the patience of its irrevocable flight.
Salvatore Quasimodo
(Translated by Allen Mandelbaum)
