C’era una volta/Once upon a time by Giuseppe Ungaretti

30 August 20161 July 2017

C’era una volta

Giuseppe Ungaretti

Bosco Cappuccio
ha un declivio
di velluto verde
come una dolce
poltrona.

Appisolarmi là
solo
in un caffè remoto
con una luce fievole
come questa
di questa luna.

Quota Centoquarant’uno l’I agosto 1916

Once upon a time

Giuseppe Ungaretti

Bosco Cappuccio
has a slope
of green velvet
like a soft
armchair.

To slumber there
alone
in a remote café
under a faint light
like this
like this moon.

One-hundred and forty-one m.a.s.l., August 1st, 1916

Translation ©Matilda Colarossi

War time, and the poet finds a variation in the landscape that draws him into the past and the memory of a café. Bosco Cappuccio is the hill that offers him that illusion: its velvety green grassy slope reminds the poet of a comfortable armchair. And he is transported far from the war, far from the devastated Carso and into a café in Paris slumbering under a faint light, like the light of the moon that sheds a white light on the hill.

The poem is from the collection L’allegria, Mondadori, Milano.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.