Peter Riley, THIS HOUSE ON A GREEK HILLSIDE...

This House…

This house on a Greek hillside with its geckos and millipedes
wind bringing rain down from the mountains, the shutters
closed at night. Me with my mill-talk quieted, lying here
in the night and weather trying not to remember
trying to forget failed claims pains of inarticulation
and true attachments. I don’t forget. I don’t remember very well.

Questa casa su una collina greca con i suoi gechi i suoi millepiedi

il vento che fa scendere  la pioggia dalle montagne, le finestre

sbarrate di notte. Io finalmente in silenzio, me ne sto qui

nella notte e nel tempo  e cerco di non ricordare

cerco di dimenticare  speranze deluse  dolore della incoerenza

 affetti sinceri. Non dimentico. Non ricordo molto bene.

There were never any gods of rain, peasant of the elements
who gets on with the allotted task and washes the white stones
on the red path, slides them down the hill. That rushing sound.
That particular brow. Unerasable intimacy. Far from here
northern town cold night wet streets curtains closed glow
of radiator red in dark room, illuminating the hangings.




Non c'è mai stato alcun dio della pioggia, qualcuno che
continui a fare il compito assegnato, e dilavi i calcari bianchi
sul sentiero rosso, che li faccia franare dalla collina. Quel
rumore che precipita, quella precisa, particolare vetta.
L' intimità incancellabile. Lontano da qui una città del nord
una notte fredda   strade bagnate  tende chiuse
nella stanza buia la  spia rossa del termostato che
                                           illumina la tappezzeria.



a voice for ever, a voice at large, in the mountain sides
the small mills in stream clefts turning their wheels at night, that
rushing, hollow sound. A double voice of solitude and connection
melancholy and ecstasy writes itself into channels of the earth
and dream between walls at night of distant points of contact.



una voce per sempre, una voce libera, di notte sui fianchi della
montagna le ruote dei mulini iniziano a girare sulle forre del
ruscello,quel suono cupo, quel rombo. Una doppia voce di
solitudine e legami malinconia ed estasi scrive se stessa nei
canali della terra e del sogno la notte tra le mura  di distanti
 punti di contatto.

                                                                                     

This house on a Greek hillside with its geckos and millipedes
and painted walls. The vast wars raging across the earth
the law of the heavier weapon . . . When the heroes come we run
and hide,
we peasant faces, irrelevant elements, we are lost and done for
and kick stones in the road, the dirt road that winds up
into the hills. Our sighs run back down the meadow.


Questa casa su una collina greca con i suoi gechi i suoi millepiedi
i suoi muri dipinti ..

Qui la traduzione termina.
Troppo oscura, troppo intensa, troppo personale la poetica di
Peter Riley per poterla rendere compiutamente in italiano
 ( o in qualsiasi altra lingua, temo).
Una resa , una resa senza condizioni...




The god’s eyes looking suddenly up to us in the carved stone,
the warm air wafted up from the heater, stirring a few cobwebs
on the ceiling rose. Two fires signaling across Europe.
I’m twisting my voice out of its body to rescue a glimmer of
recognition
from the blasts of warfare. I’m working hard at this:
I’m not singing and not shouting. I’m looking for a stone.


All the pebbles I’ve picked up from all the desolate shorelines of
Europe,
a worn grey stone with a straight white line across it from Denmark
I press this stone into the world body, the dark mass,
to make there a small silence, in which we can hear
the faint sounds the insects make, the grasses hissing in the wind
the unrepresented voices of the generations. In the hard edge

Of this sphere the dead also speak, massed seeds in flower heads,
and in this seeking to gain a recognition, to participate in a chorus
which strips me of sad particulars, and address the gods,
by stones, yellow flowers, CD players, anything that works and say
that in the orkestra my guilt will modulate into the collective.
Well it may, or some other voice while the sun
drives under the earth and we tune our voices to its echo.
Voices working together, for an honest peace, for sense
in the structure, for tangle threads that connect across the indigo.