…Sono uscito al mattino al freddo e al sole

come un’impresa eroica.

…Ho fatto nulla tutta la giornata

finché stremato della gran fatica

son ritornato a stento, moribondo.

…Così ogni giorno ripasso la vita

che mi è venuta in sorte a questo mondo.

 

6 aprile 1929

 

 

…I took on the morning the cold and the sun

like I would a heroic feat

…Not a thing did I do all the day long

until wearied by the physical exertion

I just barely made it home, in a dying state.

…In this way each day I review my life

on this earth that was and is my fate.

 

April 6, 1929

 

Translation ©Matilda Colarossi

 

The poem is taken from Le poesie, by Cesare Pavese, Torino, Einaudi, 1998, pp. 294.

 

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.