A Winter Noon
by Umberto Saba
Translated from the Italian by Geoffrey Brock
Who in the moment of my happiness
(God forgive my using a word so grand,
so terrible) reduced my brief delight
nearly to tears? No doubt you'll say: "A certain
beautiful creature who was walking by
and smiled at you." But no: a child's balloon,
a blue, meandering balloon against
the azure of the air, my native sky
never so clear and cold as it was then,
at high noon on a dazzling winter day.
That sky with here and there a wisp of cloud,
and upper windows flaming in the sun,
and faint smoke from a chimney, maybe two,
and over everything, every divine
thing, that globe that had escaped a boy's
incautious fingers (surely he was out there
broadcasting through the crowded square his grief,
his immense grief) between the great facade
of the Stock Exchange and the café where I,
behind a window, watched with shining eyes
the rise and fall of what he once possessed.
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