Le ore dure

Anthony Hecht

• Editore: Donzelli Editore
• Anno: 2018
• ISBN:
  9788868438548
• Argomento: Literatura
• Categoria: Poesía

Non una preghiera, non incenso, s'alzò in quelle ore che divennero anni; e venivano ogni sera muti spettri dai forni, filtrando nell'aria frizzante, posandosi sui suoi occhi come fuliggine nera.

da Milioni d’ombre arcane

(Millions of Strange Shadows, 1977)

Green: An Epistle

This urge, wrestle, resurrection of dry sticks,

Cut stems struggling to put down feet,

What saint strained so much,

Rose on such lopped limbs to a new life?

Theodore Roethke

I write at last of the one forbidden topic

We, by a truce, have never touched upon:

Resentment, malice, hatred so inwrought

With moral inhibitions, so at odds with

The home-movie of yourself as patience, kindness,

And Charlton Heston playing Socrates,

That almost all of us were taken in,

Yourself not least, as to a giant Roxy,

Where the lights dimmed and the famous allegory

Of Good and Evil, clearly identified

By the unshaven surliness of the Bad Guys,

The virginal meekness of the ingénue,

Seduced us straight into that perfect world

Of Justice under God. Art for the sake

Of money, glamour, ego, self-deceit.

When we emerged into the assaulting sunlight,

We had a yen, like bad philosophers,

To go back to stay forever, there in the dark

With the trumpets, horses, and ancient Certitudes

On which, as we know, this great nation was founded,

Washington crossed the Delaware, and so forth.

And all of us, for an hour or so after,

Were Humphrey Bogart dating Ingrid Bergman,

Walking together but incommunicado

Till subway and homework knocked us out of it.

Verde: un’epistola

Quest’impellenza, lotta, resurrezione di stecchi,

steli tagliati che cercano di radicarsi,

quale santo ha faticato tanto,

è asceso su rami così potati a una nuova vita?

Theodore Roethke

Scrivo alfine dell’unico argomento proibito

che, per un patto, non abbiamo mai toccato:

risentimento, malizia, odio così intrecciato

alle inibizioni morali, così incongruo al filmino

domestico di te stesso tutto pazienza, gentilezza,

un Charlton Heston nel ruolo di Socrate,

che ci aveva ingannati quasi tutti, e tu

non meno di noi, come in un immenso cinema-Roxy,

con le luci che si abbassano e la celebre allegoria

di Bene e Male, palesemente sottolineata

dalla tracotanza non sbarbata dei Cattivi,

dalla mansuetudine virginale dell’ingénue,

ci seduceva assorbendoci dritti in quel mondo perfetto

di Giustizia sotto Dio. Arte che ha per scopo

soldi, fama, ego, autoinganno.

Quando riemergevamo all’aggressiva luce del sole,

provavamo una bramosia, come i cattivi filosofi,

di rientrare e rimanere là per sempre, là al buio

con le trombe, i cavalli, le antiche Certezze

su cui, come sappiamo, questa grande nazione fu fondata,

Washington che varca il Delaware, eccetera.

E tutti noi, più o meno per un’ora, poi

eravamo Humphrey Bogart che frequenta Ingrid Bergman,

camminavamo insieme ma segregati finché

la metropolitana e i compiti non ci espellevano dal sogno.

Yet even then, whatever we returned to

Was not, although we thought it was, the world.

I write at last on this topic because I am safe

Here in this grubby little border town

With its one cheap hotel. No one has my address.

The food is bad, the wine is too expensive,

And the local cathedral marred by restorations.

But from my balcony I view the east

For miles and, if I lean, the local sunsets

That bathe a marble duke with what must be

Surely the saddest light I have ever seen.

The air is thin and cool at this elevation,

And my desk wobbles unless propped with matchbooks.

It began, I suppose, as a color, yellow-green,

The tincture of spring willows, not so much color

As the sensation of color, haze that took shape

As a light scum, a doily of minutiae

On the smooth pool and surface of your mind.

A founding colony, Pilgrim amoebas

Descended from the gaseous flux when Zeus

Tossed down his great original thunderbolt

That flashed darkness like an electric tree

Or the lit-up veins in an old arthritic hand.

Here is the microscope one had as a child,

The Christmas gift of some forgotten uncle.

Here is the slide with a drop of cider vinegar

As clear as gin, clear as your early mind.

Look down, being most careful not to see

Your own eye in the mirror underneath,

Which will appear, unless your view is right,

As a darkness on the face of the first waters.

When all is silvery and brilliant, look:

The long, thin, darting shapes, the flagellates,

Rat-tailed, a...

Indice dei contenuti

• Copertina
• Frontespizio
• Copyright
• Indice
• «Una policroma nobiltà serale»: la traiettoria poetica di Anthony Hecht: Introduzione di Joseph Harrison
• Da The Hard Hours: Da Le ore dure
• Da Millions of Strange Shadows: Da Milioni d’ombre arcane
• Da The Venetian Vespers: Da I Vespri veneziani
• Da The Transparent Man: Da L’uomo trasparente
• Da Flight Among the Tombs: Da Volo tra le tombe
• Da The Darkness and the Light: Da La tenebra e la luce
• Note