To slump at noon thought-sick and pale
under the scorching garden wall,
to hear a snake scrape past, the blackbirds creak
in the dry thorn thicket, the brushwood brake.
Between tufts of vetch, in the cracks of the ground
to spy out the ants’ long lines of march;
now they reach the top of a crumb-sized mound,
the lines break, they stumble into a ditch.
To observe between the leaves the pulse
beneath the sea’s scaly skin,
while from the dry cliffs the cicada calls
like a knife on the grinder’s stone.
And going into the sun’s blaze
once more, to feel, with sad surprise
how all life and its battles
is in this walk alongside a wall
topped with sharp bits of glass from broken bottles.
Eugenio Montale (1896-1981, Italy), from Ossi di seppia – 1916 (Mondadori, Milano), translated by Millicent Bell
Source: http://www.bu.edu/agni/poetry/print/2000/51-montale3.html
Cover: Sun&Sea (Marina), opera-performance by Rugile Barzdziukaite, Vaiva Grainyte, Lina Lapelyte at Biennale Arte 2019, Venice © Andrej Vasilenko