To return there where once appeared before...

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by Michelangelo Buonarroti
translation by Gilbert Wesley Purdy


To return there where once appeared before
That immortal form, your earthly keep,
Like an angel filled with blushing modesty
To heal each mind, all the world would honor.
This alone I desire, and is Love to me itself;
Not to penetrate your serene composure:
The thing which Love has yet to discompose for
Having only hold of hope, in which virtue dwells.
Nor otherwise embrace things new and rare
By which nature gets its way; it is heaven
From out its endless bounties clothes you so.
Nor does God display His grace for me elsewhere
More than in that most sweet and mortal raiment;
And which alone I love, seeing there its picture go.



Gilbert Wesley Purdy's work in poetry, prose and translation has appeared in many journals, paper and electronic, including: Jacket Magazine (Australia); Poetry International (San Diego State University); Grand Street; the Valparaiso Poetry Review; The Pedestal Magazine; SLANT (University of Central Arkansas); Orbis (UK); Eclectica; and Quarterly Literary Review Singapore. His work in journalism has been cited by MSNBC, Newsweek, and Americas.Org. His Hyperlinked Online Bibliography is now also hosted at BlogSpot.

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How Filled with Joy, Happy and Well-Informed...

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Michelangelo

translation by Gilbert Wesley Purdy

How filled with joy, happy and well-informed
with flowers, upon her golden tresses, that garland,
as if it sent itself to her above all others, and
as if its only desire were to kiss that forehead!
All of the day that cloak is contented
that cups her breast with the threat to set it free,
and those golden strands ask only
to touch her cheeks and neck without an end.
But happier yet the lace like joy itself withal,
gilding a secret place, made still gentler,
that fondles and strokes the breast, which he charms.
And that purest binding, that which covers us all,
seems to say to me: "I want to cling here forever!
"And what still finer embraces await these arms!"



Gilbert Wesley Purdy has published poetry, prose and translation in many journals, paper and electronic, including: Jacket Magazine, Poetry International (San Diego State University), The Georgia Review (University of Georgia), Grand Street, SLANT (University of Central Arkansas), Consciousness Literature and the Arts (University of Wales, Aberystwyth), Orbis (UK), Eclectica, and Valparaiso Poetry Review. Links to his work online and to a selected bibliography of his work in paper venues appear at his Hyperlinked Online Bibliography.

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To Himself

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Giacomo Leopardi

translation by Gilbert Wesley Purdy

Now you will rest forever,
My tired heart. The fabulous deceit
That I myself believed eternal has ended.
Ended. How sharply I feel,
In we of the dear deceit,
There is no hope, desire being spent.
Rest forever. So many
Palpitations. Your flutterings
Serve no one, nor do you dignify the earth
With your sighs. Life is bitter and empty,
Nothing more. The world is a slough.
Calm yourself now. Despair
For the last time. Fate gave your kind
No gift but death. At last
Nature disdains you, the brute
Power that, lurking, imposes the common day,
And the infinite vanity of all things.




Gilbert Wesley Purdy has published poetry, prose and translation in many journals, paper and electronic, including: Jacket Magazine, Poetry International (San Diego State University), The Georgia Review (University of Georgia), Grand Street, SLANT (University of Central Arkansas), Consciousness Literature and the Arts (University of Wales, Aberystwyth), Orbis (UK), Eclectica, and Valparaiso Poetry Review. Links to his work online and to a selected bibliography of his work in paper venues appear at his Hyperlinked Online Bibliography.

Also at Virtual Grub Street by/about Giacomo Leopardi:

• The Giacomo Leopardi Page (with links to holographic manuscript images, essays, poetry, translations, photos and more);
• The Infinite by Giacomo Leopardi;
• To the Moon by Giacomo Leopardi.
  
  
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The Infinite

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Giacomo Leopardi

translation by Gilbert Wesley Purdy

This solitary hill has always been dear to me,
And this hedgerow, which closes in the view
So well that one need hardly look upon the west.
But sitting and reflecting, from out of the endless
Expanse of night sky, and the supernatural
Silences and so profound stillnesses,
It comes to me here how I beguile myself;
For a moment, then, the heart no longer fears.
And, like the wind I hear whisper among these leaves,
I hear within that infinite silence a voice:
It overwhelms me with the eternal,
And the seasons passed away, and that present
And living, and with its own sound. Thus within
This immensity my thoughts are drowned...
And it is sweet to be shipwrecked in this sea.




Gilbert Wesley Purdy has published poetry, prose and translation in many journals, paper and electronic, including: Jacket Magazine, Poetry International (San Diego State University), The Georgia Review (University of Georgia), Grand Street, SLANT (University of Central Arkansas), Consciousness Literature and the Arts (University of Wales, Aberystwyth), Orbis (UK), Eclectica, and Valparaiso Poetry Review. Links to his work online and to a selected bibliography of his work in paper venues appear at his Hyperlinked Online Bibliography.

Also at Virtual Grub Street by/about Giacomo Leopardi:

• The Giacomo Leopardi Page (with links to holographic manuscript images, essays, poetry, translations, photos and more);
• To Himself by Giacomo Leopardi;
• To the Moon by Giacomo Leopardi.
  

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