Roberto Sanesi
Elegy for Vernon Watkins
You would have said the hills of Wales
were green and violet in the parched
and ferny sea wind, that harebells
and horses were out, cloud riding,
and gulls and herons hurtled on air
like whitest petals of white flowers.
And you would have given yourself up wholly
to the rhythmical, blinding, lullaby chime
of the concave moon and its mirroring sky,
saying, ‘This constant signing of tide
on sand, this is my interpreter,
of myself to myself - vision, contemplation,
sound and silence in the perfect accord
of spade and soil, sickle and clover.’
Meanwhile you would watch at your eastern window
the rush of shadow, falling, spreading,
open armed, leaving only in the shell
the last light and the last wound,
holly of memory, before it transformed
into the deep but dazzling darkness.
Others I have abandoned dead
and watched fade, quiet and composed
within living minds only, after death only,
certain we would not betray their lies.
But you saw the gold eyes of birds
immutable in a verb of clear waters
and air a wavering column of meanings
hung between a motionless butterfly
and mystery stilled in its butterfly wings.
So you may spurn our mourning, being completed,
and return smiling, no longer seeking
in the crystal ball you hold in your hands
anything other than its own light and curve
navigating an October dusk. You need yield
no more to nostalgia. The Pennard soil
records your light footstep, your praying step
that made rocks fast and colossal the sea,
all as it should be, blood grain, corn ear,
mating in your step, your breath. Meanwhile
I see you play tennis with Taliesin, backhanding
his serve across the Atlantic. You watch
the imperfect trajectory but pay no heed
if asked to trace on the court of the deep
conscious imprints by correcting your steps
or accepting the rules of the game. You would say
there is no contradiction in this immense violet
night blooming out of the sunset
over the hills of Gower with its cold
swan’s wings accompanying its wake.
In your bones you knew abstract conjecture
could never yield a true equation. Wholly
for this, perhaps, you return. You achieved a match
between your partial vision and time's limitations
and now have taken back that vision’s meaning
into the deep but dazzling darkness.
were green and violet in the parched
and ferny sea wind, that harebells
and horses were out, cloud riding,
and gulls and herons hurtled on air
like whitest petals of white flowers.
And you would have given yourself up wholly
to the rhythmical, blinding, lullaby chime
of the concave moon and its mirroring sky,
saying, ‘This constant signing of tide
on sand, this is my interpreter,
of myself to myself - vision, contemplation,
sound and silence in the perfect accord
of spade and soil, sickle and clover.’
Meanwhile you would watch at your eastern window
the rush of shadow, falling, spreading,
open armed, leaving only in the shell
the last light and the last wound,
holly of memory, before it transformed
into the deep but dazzling darkness.
Others I have abandoned dead
and watched fade, quiet and composed
within living minds only, after death only,
certain we would not betray their lies.
But you saw the gold eyes of birds
immutable in a verb of clear waters
and air a wavering column of meanings
hung between a motionless butterfly
and mystery stilled in its butterfly wings.
So you may spurn our mourning, being completed,
and return smiling, no longer seeking
in the crystal ball you hold in your hands
anything other than its own light and curve
navigating an October dusk. You need yield
no more to nostalgia. The Pennard soil
records your light footstep, your praying step
that made rocks fast and colossal the sea,
all as it should be, blood grain, corn ear,
mating in your step, your breath. Meanwhile
I see you play tennis with Taliesin, backhanding
his serve across the Atlantic. You watch
the imperfect trajectory but pay no heed
if asked to trace on the court of the deep
conscious imprints by correcting your steps
or accepting the rules of the game. You would say
there is no contradiction in this immense violet
night blooming out of the sunset
over the hills of Gower with its cold
swan’s wings accompanying its wake.
In your bones you knew abstract conjecture
could never yield a true equation. Wholly
for this, perhaps, you return. You achieved a match
between your partial vision and time's limitations
and now have taken back that vision’s meaning
into the deep but dazzling darkness.
Translated from Italian, 1980
Published in Poetry Wales, vol. 17, No. 2, Autumn 1981
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