Since spending some time in Italy earlier this year, I have been returning to read some more poetry from Cesare Pavese. I had encountered him once or twice prior to this, but not in any depth. I like matching my reading to my travel, so that I can feel the full effect in situ, so to speak. So during June and July, I came back to Cesare Pavese in a rather more dedicated fashion.
Pavese struggled against fascism, refusing to publish censored works, thus often turning to translation and editing of English-language (particularly American) authors during his lifetime. And in this second ‘attended’ reading of his poetry, I can distinctly feel the strong American influence – a tinge of Hemmingway and Faulkner in those spare, definite lines.
In the 1930s, Pavese met and fell in love with Tina Pizzardo at an anti-fascist group meeting. She was secretly a member of the Italian Communist Party. Tina convinced Pavese to receive letters for her at his address from a jailed anti-fascist, Altiero Spinelli. Pavese was later arrested and imprisoned for receiving them. Tina is the T. of this poem.
Two Poems for T
The plants of the lake
saw you one morning.
The stones the goats the sweat
exist outside of days
like the water of the lake.
The lake remains unmarked
by the days’ pain and clamor.
The mornings will pass,
the anguish will pass,
other stones and sweat
will bite into your blood -
it won’t always be like this.
You’ll rediscover something.
Another morning will come,
when, beyond the clamor,
you’ll be alone on the lake.
You also are love.
Made of blood and earth
like the others. You walk
like one who won’t stray far
from your own front door.
You watch like one who waits
and doesn’t see. You are earth
that aches and keeps silent.
You have bursts and lapses,
you have words – you walk
and wait. Your blood
is love – that’s all.
Translated by Geoffrey Brock
Head on over to the Tuesday Poem hub this week for a truly phenomenal poem - ’Hope’ - from the talented Dinah Hawken, chosen by the erudite Keith Westwater.
