Eugenio Montale (October 12, 1896 – September 12, 1981) was an Italian poet, prose writer, editor and translator, and recipient of the 1975 Nobel Prize in Literature.
AT THE THRESHOLD
Eugenio Montale
Be pleased if the wind that enters the orchard
brings back the surge of life:
here where a dead tangle of memories
sinks and founders,
there was no garden, only a reliquary.
The flapping you hear is not flight
but a commotion in the eternal womb;
you see how this strip of solitary earth
transforms itself into a crucible.
Beyond the sheer wall is rage.
If you proceed, you might bump into—
perhaps you might—the saving apparition:
here the stories are composed, the acts
that the game of the future will cancel.
Look for a broken link in the net
that holds us down, jump out and flee!
Go, I’ve prayed this for you—now my thirst
will be lighter; the rust less bitter. . .