This poem is a joyful beauty by Milanese poet Antonia Pozzi, who died at only 26 in 1938. She loved her mountains and found solace and inspiration in nature, more than people. On the year in which the racial laws were implemented in Italy, she wrote: 'Perhaps, the age of words has forever ended'. She was a victim of her father's censorship both in life and death: he censored most of the poems he found in her diaries. I find her wonderful, cool and great. Despite her suffering, this poem is a love song to the beauty of the mountains, to the happy feelings they would stir in her: an ode to simplicity.
Written on the 12th August 1933. Find the Italian version attached underneath, as usual! Buona lettura x
ALPINE WATER
Joy of singing like you sing, creek;
joy of laughing
feeling, in my mouth, teeth
as white as your shores;
joy of being born
simply on a sunny morning
among the violets
of a pasture field;
of having forgotten the night,
and the biting ice.
ACQUA ALPINA
Gioia di cantare come te, torrente; gioia di ridere sentendo nella bocca i denti bianchi come il tuo greto; gioia d’essere nata soltanto in un mattino di sole tra le viole di un pascolo; d’aver scordato la notte ed il morso dei ghiacci.
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