Ungaretti: Pilgrimage

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Song-sparrow (Melospiza melodia) in a hawthorn (Crataegus), Léon-Provancher marsh, Québec, Canada: photo by Cephas, 2009

....Valley of the Isolated Tree 16 August 1916


Huddled
in these guts of rubble
hour on hour
I've dragged my mud
worn
carcass
slithering through
the ooze

an old shoe sole or
a seed of rusted whitethorn

Ungaretti man
of pain
illusion
is enough to encourage you

Out there
in the fog
a searchlight
creates a sea

Searchlight beams, Malta: photo via Imperial War Museum



Italian soldiers crossing a stream under fire, 1916 : photo from Collier's Photographic History of the European War (New York, 1918)



Dead French soldiers in the Argonne, 1917: photo from Collier's Photographic History of the European War (New York, 1918)



British outpost in Flanders, 1916: photo from Collier's Photographic History of the European War (New York, 1918)

Pellegrinaggio


....Valloncello dell'Albero Isolato il 16 agosto 1916


In agguato
in queste budella
di macerie
ore e ore
ho strascicato
la mia carcassa
usata dal fango
come una suola
o come un seme
di spinalba

Ungaretti
uomo di pena
ti basta un'illusione
per farti coraggio

Un riflettore
di là
mette un mare
nella nebbia

Juniper-quince rust (a fungal infection of Gymnosporangium clavipes), presenting as a canker at the leaf/thorn node of a hawthorn branch, with tubular pinkish aecia extruding from the canker: photo by Ragesoss, 2008

Giuseppe Ungaretti: Pellegrinaggio (Pilgrimage) from Il porto sepolto (The buried harbour), 1916, translated by TC