East Coker, by T.S.Eliot

Pic from here

Four Quartets
East Coker, 3, 13-28

I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you
Which shall be the darkness of God. As, in a theatre,
The lights are extinguished, for the scene to be changed
With a hollow rumble of wings, with a movement of darkness on darkness,
And we know that the hills and the trees, the distant panorama
And the bold imposing facade are all being rolled away —
Or as, when an underground train, in the tube, stops too long between stations
And the conversation rises and slowly fades into silence
And you see behind every face the mental emptiness deepen
Leaving only the growing terror of nothing to think about;
Or when, under ether, the mind is conscious but conscious of nothing —
I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.

 

T.S. Eliot

 

I studied at university. I was young. I was really not good.
I found Eliot, I found this one.

First time I red it I was in a undergroud train.

So beautiful … to make me cry.

Another time, by W.H.Auden

Pic from here

Another Time

For us like any other fugitive,
Like the numberless flowers that cannot number
And all the beasts that need not remember,
It is today in which we live.

So many try to say Not Now,
So many have forgotten how
To say I Am, and would be
Lost, if they could, in history.

Bowing, for instance, with such old-world grace
To a proper flag in a proper place,
Muttering like ancients as they stump upstairs
Of Mine and His or Ours and Theirs.

Just as if time were what they used to will
When it was gifted with possession still,
Just as if they were wrong
In no more wishing to belong.

No wonder then so many die of grief,
So many are so lonely as they die;
No one has yet believed or liked a lie,
Another time has other lives to live.

W.H. Auden

 

From years I try to translate it into Italian… I am not able …

 

I breathe peace

JB, 2020

 

I breathe peace in this sunset
among ivies, periwinkles and shadows.
I’m my smoke and I melt in the air …
who knows where evening’s breeze will take me

Instinct wind often overwhelmed my
heart and limbs and skin and reason too
toward far, dark and stranger landscapes.
I need order; in the evening
                                            it comes

 

April, 5th 2020

 

 

Italian version

Sunset floods

I’m trapped in my home, so I cannot share here a better photo…I’m sorry

 

Anyway, sunset still floods with peace
us and yellow light comes. A breeze breathes.
A joyful blackbird plays near me,
herald of infinite souvenirs

Yes, we live and we’ll live in this world
that forgives and maintains us.
I thank You, my kind Lord, Father Lord,
fill my nothing with deep and strong wish

 

April, 25th 2020

 

Italian version

 

 

 

Like a shadow 2

Maybe only a variation of this one

 

Sometimes I’m only my shadow, slipping
into dark and strange nights as a ghost
of myself, as a mask hiding me,
hiding my whole myself and my soul
above all in this silenced world

Yet I need higher go, towards sun
I wish slip into air till to be
in the blue so far sky and so fly
higher, faster and free from myself

 

April, 21st 2020

Italian version