To the moon

----------------------------------

Graceful moon, I remember

That – it’s been almost a year now – I would come,

Filled with anguish, to this hill to gaze at you:

And you were leaning over that forest

As you are doing now, lighting up all of it.

Yet your face appeared nebulous and trembling

To my lights, due to the tears wetting

My eyelashes, for troubled

Was my life: as it still is, nor will it change,

My dear moon. Yet that time’s memory

Helps me, and so does the recalling

Of my pain. Oh! How grateful does

The remembrance of past things occur

In the years of youth, when the course of

Hope is still long, whereas short is the course of memory,

Although the things remembered are painful, and the trouble continues!


A translation of Giacomo Leopardi’s Alla luna
(by Bruno Gullì)