Where was the moon? The sky
Was aswim with pearling dawn
And the almond tree and apple tree
Seemed to crane towards where it shone.
Then from a banked black cloud
Lightnings flickered and flew
As a voice came out of the wood:
To whoo . . .
A scatter of sparkling stars
In the milky misting light.
I could hear the sea’s sad choirs.
Could hear the rustling thicket.
In my heart I felt a beat miss
Like a cry of loss, or its echo.
The sob dwindled into the distance:
To whoo . . .
Over all the moonlit heights
Wind trembled, sighed and shivered.
Cicadas finicky notes
Tuned up quick, quicksilvered.
(Chimes at invisible doors somewhere
Closed for good, perhaps, against you? . . .)
Then that banshee wail on the air:
To whoo . . .
Today’s poem is from The Translations of Seamus Heaney (Faber). Heaney was invited to participate in a 2012 conference marking the centenary of Giovanni Pascoli’s death in 1912). In an essay for the conference Heaney talks of how the landscape of Pascoli’s poetry reminded him ‘very much of the home ground of my childhood – open countryside with breezes blowing, flowers blossoming, berries on briars, robins in hedges and a general feeling of fresh and airy life’. The translation reflects Heaney’s sense that a kinship in geographies as well as poetic outlook is being responded to.
Was aswim with pearling dawn
And the almond tree and apple tree
Seemed to crane towards where it shone.
Then from a banked black cloud
Lightnings flickered and flew
As a voice came out of the wood:
To whoo . . .
A scatter of sparkling stars
In the milky misting light.
I could hear the sea’s sad choirs.
Could hear the rustling thicket.
In my heart I felt a beat miss
Like a cry of loss, or its echo.
The sob dwindled into the distance:
To whoo . . .
Over all the moonlit heights
Wind trembled, sighed and shivered.
Cicadas finicky notes
Tuned up quick, quicksilvered.
(Chimes at invisible doors somewhere
Closed for good, perhaps, against you? . . .)
Then that banshee wail on the air:
To whoo . . .
Today’s poem is from The Translations of Seamus Heaney (Faber). Heaney was invited to participate in a 2012 conference marking the centenary of Giovanni Pascoli’s death in 1912). In an essay for the conference Heaney talks of how the landscape of Pascoli’s poetry reminded him ‘very much of the home ground of my childhood – open countryside with breezes blowing, flowers blossoming, berries on briars, robins in hedges and a general feeling of fresh and airy life’. The translation reflects Heaney’s sense that a kinship in geographies as well as poetic outlook is being responded to.
