From L’Allegria/Cheerfulness (1914-1919) by Guiseppi Ungaretti
Part 1, Ultime/Latest
Anche le tombe sono scomparse
Spazio nero infinito calato
il mio compagno arabo
che s’e ucciso l’altra sera
Rifa giorno
Tornano le tombe
appiattate nei verde tetro
delle ultime oscurita
nel verde torbido
del primo chiaro
Chiaroscuro
Even the tombs have disappeared
Infinite black space dropped
from this balcony
at the cemetery
He came to find me
my Arab companion
he who killed himself just the other evening
Redo day
The flat tombs return
in the green gloom
of the last darkness
in the turbid green
of first light
Wally Swist’s books include Huang Po and the Dimensions of Love (Southern Illinois University Press, 2012), selected by Yusef Komunyakaa as co-winner in the 2011 Crab Orchard Series Open Poetry Contest, and A Bird Who Seems to Know Me: Poems Regarding Birds & Nature (Ex Ophidia Press, 2019), the winner of the 2018 Ex Ophidia Press Poetry Prize.
