Poetry Friday

Like the poem, but I'm thinking the translation could be better. Nevertheless...


Bring me the sunflower

Eugenio Montale

Bring me the sunflower so I may transplant it

in my native soil burnt by the sea-salt,

let it display all day to the mirroring blue spaces

of the sky the anxiety of its yellow face.



Obscure things tend towards clarity,

bodies dissolve themselves in a weightless flow

of colors: these then into music. To vanish

is thus the supreme fate of all fates.



Bring me the plant that points to where

pale transparencies rise to the heights

and life itself evaporates like air;

bring me the sunflower crazed with light.



translated from the Italian by Margaret Brose