This poem is from the collection, Come un’allegoria [Like an allegory], published in 1936.

In explaining the title of the collection, Caproni stated: “In my first collection, I express the doubt that all reality is nothing but an allegory for something else which escapes our logic.”

Objective reality and subjective perception, therefore, are transitory, malleable even.

Synesthesia is Caproni’s poetic device of choice here: We see the blood of the day that inflames the lea, like the flushing of cheeks and face when we are excited or ashamed. We feel, if the loud and boisterous games come to an end, the heat of the children’s breath, alive in the wind, sweeping over us.

The translation presented a number of difficulties which regarded mostly alliteration and consonance, but also syntax: the use of the letter S, for example, quickens the metre in Italian; and the syntax (perforce different in the two languages) make, at one point, the order of the verses inevitably different. -M.C.

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