from the Italian of Giacomo Leopardi
for Katharine Washburn
Always dear to me was this solitary hill
and this hedge which on many sides
excludes all sight of the last horizon.
But sitting and gazing at endless spaces
beyond it, and superhuman
silences, and impenetrable stillness,
in thought I plunge unto where
the heart almost cringes. And as I hear
the wind rustling in this brush, I that
infinite silence, to its voice,
compare: and sense the eternal;
and the dead seasons; and the present,
with sound alive. Thus amid such
immensity does my thought drown
and sweet to me is drifting in this sea.