Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

Poetry Library Southbank Centre - The Poetry Library housing the Arts Council Collection at Southbank Centre

« Previous item
Contents of this issue
Next item »

Cesare Pavese

print this page

Agony

I'll wander the streets till I'm dead tired,
I'll learn to live alone and look each passing face
straight in the eye and still be what I am.
This coolness ascending in me, searching through my veins,
is an awakening each morning that I've never felt
so real -except that I feel stronger
than my body, and a colder shiver comes each morning now.

The mornings I had at twenty are now far: away.
And tomorrow, twenty-one: tomorrow I'll go out in tile
                                                                         streets –

I remember every stone, and the layers of the sky.
From tomorrow people will start seeing me,
I'll walk straight, and perhaps I'll pause
to see myself in windows. There were mornings once
when I was young and didn't know it, didn't even know
that who was passing by was me  a woman, mistress
of herself. The scrawny girl I used to be
was awakened by a weeping that went on for years.
Now it's as if that grieving never was.

And all I want are colours. Colours don't weep,
they're like an awakening: tomorrow colours
will return. Every woman will go out into the street,
each body a colour  even the children.
And this body of mine, dressed after so much paleness
in a frivolous red, will repossess its life.
I'll feel glances slide over me
and I'll know I'm me: a sidelong look
and I'll see I'm there, among people. Each new morning
I'll go out into the streets and look for colours.

Translated by Duncan Bush

Page(s) 16

Back to top