Poems and translations

Chapter 17: DREAD

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About This Book

The collection gathers lyric and ballad-like poems that portray rural landscapes, local speech, and vivid characters through dark humor, elegy, and plainspoken lyricism; many pieces are concise narratives or monologues about love, death, loss, and social life, while others register mythic or meditative moods. A substantial section offers translations and adaptations from Petrarch, Villon, Leopardi, and medieval lyricists, varying between literal and free renderings. A prefatory essay frames the poet's interest in mixing exalted feeling with the material of ordinary life. The sequence balances songful rhythms with austere images and an abrupt, colloquial voice.

DREAD

Beside a chapel I’d a room looked down,

Where all the women from the farms and town,

On Holy-days and Sundays used to pass

To marriages, and christenings, and to Mass.

Then I sat lonely watching score and score,

Till I turned jealous of the Lord next door....

Now by this window, where there’s none can see,

The Lord God’s jealous of yourself and me.