The Eel
(L’anguilla, la sirena)
Eel, siren
of icy seas that quits the Baltic
to reach these seas of ours,
our estuaries, rivers,
that returns in the depths, under the back-flow,
from branch to branch, and then
from thread to thread, thinning down
penetrating always deeper, further into the heart
of granite, infiltrating
among rills of mud till one day
light exploding from the chestnut-trees
kindles a flicker in dead-water pools,
in ditches that slope
from the Apennine cliffs to Romagna ;
eel, torch, whiplash,
arrow of Love on earth,
that only our gorges or the desiccated
stream-beds of the Pyrenees lead back
to paradises of fecundity;
green spirit that searches
for life where only
drought and desolation bite,
spark that says
everything starts where everything seems
burned dry; buried branch;
brief rainbow, twin
to that which marks your limits
and lets you shine intact among the sons
of men, immersed in your mud, do you
not recognize your sister?
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