Ancient one, I'm drunk with the voice
Ancient one, I'm drunk with the voice
that comes out of your mouths
when they open like green bells,
then implode and dissolve.
You know the house of my long-gone
summers stood by you,
there in the land where the sun bakes
and mosquitoes cloud the air.
Today as then I turn to stone
in your presence, sea,
but no longer feel worthy
of the solemn admonition of your breathing.
It was you who first told me
the petty ferment of my heart was no more
than a moment of yours; that deep in me
was your hazardous law: to be vast
and various yet fixed:
and so empty myself of all uncleanliness
like you who toss on the beaches
among cork and seaweed and starfish
the useless rubble of your abyss.
Commentary
From "Mediterraneo"
Translated by Jonathan Galassi
I miss the sea. One of the disadvantages of living in a land-locked city is that you no longer have the murmuring presence of the ocean for a neighbour, no longer observe the ritual of turning that corner onto Marine Drive and having the Arabian Sea fling open its arms to greet you. Montale, elsewhere in Mediterraneo, speaks of being “dumbfounded / like a man deprived of memory / whose country come back to him” on hearing the sea again. That’s the kind of nostalgia that the ocean demands.
And who better to render that nostalgia but Montale (who remains, thus far, unrepresented on Minstrels) that most brooding of sea poets, whose relationship with the sea is one of endless return, as though the tide of his language, retreating, left little images of the sea behind like pools. What Montale captures beautifully here, I think, is the duality of the sea, the coming together of stillness and motion, of restlessness and an abiding sense of calm. “To be vast and various yet fixed”. It’s this dependability - this gift of constant surprise - that makes both Montale and the sea an object of potentially endless contemplation.
— Aseem
Montale biography:
http://nobelprize.org/literature/laureates/1975/montale-bio.html
And for those who’d like the poem in the original (incidentally, I’d love to know how good the translation is - I’m a little suspicious):
“Antico, sone ubriacato dall voce”
Antico, sone ubriacato dall voce
ch'esce dalle tue bocche quando si schiudono
come verdi campane e si ributtano
indietro e si disciolgono.
La case dell mie estati lontane
t'era accanto, lo sai,
la nel paese dove il sole cuoce
e annuvolano l'aria le zanzare.
Come allora oggi in tua presenza impietro,
mare, ma non piu degno
mi credo del solenne ammonimento
del tuo respiro. Tu m'hai detto primo
che il piccino fermento
del mio cuore non era che un momento
del tuo; che mi era in fondo
la tua legge rischiosa: esse vasto e diverso
e insieme fisso:
e svuotarmi cosi d'ogni lordura
come tu fai che sbatti sulle sponde
tra sugheri alghe asterie
la inutili macerie del tuo abisso.
– Eugenio Montale