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Poems and translations

Chapter 24: WINTER
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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.

WINTER

With little money in a great city

There’s snow in every street
Where I go up and down,
And there’s no woman, man, or dog
That knows me in the town.
I know each shop, and all
These Jews, and Russian Poles,
For I go walking night and noon
To spare my sack of coals.