Shh! On the verge
of this thicket I hear
no human words.
The voices I hear
emerge
as droplets loom
on leaves.
Listen. Rain
strewn from scattered clouds
falls on brittle
pods
of tarmarind,
on needles
of scabrous pine,
on myrtle divine.
Rain wets the effulgent
bloom of broom,
fragrant tufts of juniper,
our idyllic faces,
our bare
hands. Rain
soaks the spare
fabric with which our flesh
is clad, thoughts here
disclosed afresh,
the alluring fable
which deluded you,
Hermione,
now deluding me.
Do you hear? Rain falls
on lonely growth,
its sound
upon boughs both
thick and sparse
and various in the air.
Listen. Cicada calls
respond to this lament,
their cry
quelled neither by heat
nor this ashen sky.
The pine
has one sound, myrtle
another, juniper
yet another, each
an instrument
ployed by numerous
plangent fingers.
Immersed in this choir
we sylvan sprites
live out similar,
vital branching lives.
And like a leaf
your exalted
face is soft
with rain, the hair
on your head as odorous
as the lambent broom,
O creature so earthly
who bears the name:
Hermione ….
Listen, listen:
the polyphony of
cicadas in the air
bit by bit subsides
as weeping rain
swells into
a plangent dirge
which emerges
from distant dark
damp depths.
That churr dwindles.
Only a trembling
sostenuto hangs,
wavers, swells,
quavers, fades.
Not the sea’s voice
but the silver rain’s
cleansing thrum,
its patter’s timbre
treble or bass
depending on the leaves.
Listen. The daughter
of air is hush
but the daughter
of distant silt,
a frog, croaks
from deep shadows
— who knows where,
who knows where?
And rain falls
on your lashes,
Hermione ….
Rain falls on
your dark lashes,
as if you weep,
but from pleasure,
drops almost of sap
seeping through bark.
For the fresh scent
of life dwells within us,
your heart
an untouched peach
within your breast,
eyes within their lids
springs stirring in grass,
teeth green almonds
in their sockets.
So we pass from patch to patch,
now bound, now not,
tenuous green
shoots entangling our ankles,
entwining our knees
— who knows where,
who knows where?
And it keeps raining on
our idyllic faces, our bare
hands. Rain soaks
the spare
fabric with which our flesh
is clad,
thoughts here
disclosed afresh,
the alluring fable
which deluded me
and now deludes you,
Hermione.
(After Gabriele D’Annunzio. The original Italian can be found
by searching for La pioggia nel pineto)