Giovanni Giudici , da UNA SERA COME TANTE (An evening like so many others)

...Ma che si viva o si muoia è indifferente,
se private persone senza storia
siamo, lettori di giornali, spettatori
televisivi, utenti di servizi:
dovremmo essere in molti, sbagliare in molti,
in compagnia di molti sommare i nostri vizi,
non questa grigia innocenza che inermi ci tiene

qui, dove il male è facile e inarrivabile il bene.
È nostalgia di un futuro che mi estenua,
ma poi d’un sorriso si appaga o di un come-se-fosse!
Da quanti anni non vedo un fiume in piena?
Da quanto in questa viltà ci assicura
la nostra disciplina senza percosse?
Da quanto ha nome bontà la paura?

Una sera come tante, ed è la mia vecchia impostura
che dice: domani, domani… pur sapendo
che il nostro domani era già ieri da sempre.
La verità chiedeva assai più semplici tempre.
Ride il tranquillo despota che lo sa:
mi numera fra i suoi lungo la strada che scendo.
C’è più onore in tradire che in essere fedeli a metà.




But it makes no difference wheter we live or die,
if we are private citizens without a history,
readers of newspapers, TV viewers,
customer of the public utilities:
there ought to be a lot of us, a lot of us to go wrong,
to reckon up our vices all together,
not this gray innocence that keep us
           defenseless here

where evil is easy and good unreachable.
It's nostalgia for the future that exhausts me
but then contents itself with a smile or an.it.were!
How many years since I've seen a river at the full?
For how long , in oue cowardice, have we been
         reassured by
a discipline that comes without blows?

An evening like so many others, and it's my old fraud
that says, Tomorrow, tomorrow...even if it knows
that our tomorrow was already yesterday always.
Truth required a much simpler temperament.
The tranquil despot who knows it laughs:
he counts me one of his own, along the roas
        I descend.
There is more honor in betrayal than in being faithful
          by halves.


English translation by Karl Kirchwey


Karl Kirchwey is a prize–winning American poet who has lived in both Europe and the United States and whose work is strongly influenced by the Greek and Roman past. He often looks to the classical world for inspiration with themes which have included loss, loneliness, nostalgia and modern atrocities, and how the past relates to the present. While he is best known for his poems, he also is a book reviewer, award-winning teacher of creative writing, translator, arts administrator, literary curator, and advocate for writers and writing. He was director of the Unterberg Poetry Center of the 92nd Street Y for thirteen years and is currently a professor at Bryn Mawr College and from 2000–2010 directed its creative writing program. From 2010–2013 Kirchwey is serving as the Andrew Heiskell Arts Director at the American Academy in Rome.