Ta-da! Here they are, five Sundance Kid sunflower plants all planted up in the new flower bed. And it only took three days, a pickaxe, a friendly stranger, and one torn finger nail to get it done.
"Bring me then the plant that points to those bright Lucidites, swirling up from the earth,
And life itself exhaling that central breath!
Bring me the sunflower, crazed with the love of light."
--Eugenio Montale
(p.s.--this is the 300th picture taken with my new camera)
Here is the same poem by a different translator, from Montales' poetry collection Cuttlefish Bones
ReplyDeleteBring to me the sunflower so that I may
transplant it to my salt-desiccated soil
and make it show its anxious yellow face
to heaven’s clear blue mirror all the day.
Obscure things are tending to a clearness,
bodies self-consume in a flowing dance
of tints and shades: in music. To disappear
is the best chance of every kind of chance.
Bring to me the flower which leads right
to that spot where transparent depths surge up
and life evaporates like ghostly essence;
bring to me the sunflower mad with light.
(translated by Alan Marshfield)