SPACE IS A MALADY OF LIFE — HA! — A CONTRADICTION

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SPESSO IL MALE DI VIVERE HO INCONTRATO


Eugenio Montale

Spesso il male di vivere ho incontrato:

era il rivo strozzato che gorgoglia,

era l'incartocciarsi della foglia

riarsa, era il cavallo stramazzato.

Bene non seppi, fuori del prodigio

che schiude la divina Indifferenza:

era la statua nella sonnolenza

del meriggio, e la nuvola, e il falco alto levato

What's that, you may well ask? That is a poem by the great Italian poet, Eugenio Montale. Today's prompt from the good folk over at NaPoWriMo is to take a poem in a language you're not familiar with and "translate" it into English based on how the words look and sound.

The trick for this one is to find a short poem. A haiku would be nice, but they tend to be in languages that don't use the alphabet which would be really challenging. So I'm going to play with this eight-line poem I found by Montale. 

Ready? Here goes:

Space is a Malady of Life — Ha! —A Contradiction

Space is a malady of life —ha! — a contradiction:
its aura is riveting, strong; gorgeous,
its aura carted off down into the foliage
behind; its aura caved in, stranded.

Benevolent, not insipid, fjords in a prodigious dell
it shuns divine indifference:
its aura a statue that knells somnolently
in the miraculous dell; and the nova, it is false, although it levitates.


So there. Done. Strange little exercise, this one.

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