Three Poems by Gabriele D'Annunzio

Translation

A Genre Picture

The evening’s mild: darlings
play, singing under the balconies;
in the bars, headlong on wings,
toasts and good bottles pop in volleys;
and off like many a sparrow
laughing children go.

The evening’s mild: the beat
bounces, flying from hearts that are glad;
to the sound of cymbals in the street,
tawny gypsies, all flower-clad,
in the candid, new moon’s aura
hop, dancing the tarantella.

The Stag

Do you not hear the dark roar drifting through
the sweep of the Serchio? The black-hoofed stag
separates from the herd, from the females,
and slips off to the wild. Soon he will sleep
upon a green bed, bowered in thick brush,
snuffling off from his frizzy snout a breath
with a violence—with a slight whiff of mint.
The tracks he leaves below have an odd look,
you know? like a pureblooded heart leaping.
Following that form he stamps the fat earth;
and the stamped clods of dirt, that he lifts up
with each of his hooves, he then lets drop down.
Well, this, what’s called, “the great seal,” the wary
hunter finds legible, reading therein
certain signs; and his judgement never fails,
oh, blessed one, who, a head of great blood,
pursues upon the setting of the stars,
and kills upon the rising of the sun,
and who sees the shudder of the vast corpse
being bit by dogs and the high antlers
of its brow rattle at end of quarrel!