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Questi giorni invernali cosi chiari Corrado Govoni Questi giorni invernali così chiari, e queste notti ancora più serene mi mettono nel cuore tanto gelo: come se mi scorresse nelle vene il freddo dei sessanta inverni amari; e fosse tutto un vetro terra e cielo col tuo ghiaccio disciolto dal mio pianto, dalle Pleiadi al vischio al calicanto. |
These winter days that are so very clear Corrado Govoni These winter days that are so very clear and the nights that are even more serene fill my heart with an abundance of rime: it is as if streaming within my veins were the cold of sixty winters severe; and as if all were glass both land and sky your ice dissolved by my tears of sorrow, from Pleiades to wintersweet to mistletoe. Translation ©Matilda Colarossi |
The poem is from the collection “Aladino”, published in 1946 and is dedicated to Govoni’s son who was shot by the Naziis during the Fosse Ardeatine massacre of March 24, 1944. It represents the highest and purest poetic moment in the collection. In these very brief verses we find the inconsolable anguish for the death of his son: the days are, therefore, cold and very clear like the rime in the poet’s heart. Everything is coldness. He, the father, is sixty, sixty are the cold winters drowned in the surrounding silence. His endless pain is projected in nature and the cosmos.
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