Rain
will fall again
on
your smooth pavement,
a
light rain like
a
breath or a step.
The
breeze and the dawn
will
flourish again
when
you return,
as if
beneath your step.
Between
flowers and sills
the
cats will know.
There
will be other days,
there
will be other voices.
You
will smile alone.
The
cats will know.
You
will hear words
old
and spent and useless
like
costumes left over
from
yesterday’s parties.
You
too will make gestures.
You’ll
answer with words—
face
of springtime,
you
too will make gestures.
The
cats will know,
face
of springtime;
and
the light rain
and
the hyacinth dawn
that
wrench the heart of him
who
hopes no more for you—
they
are the sad smile
you
smile by yourself.
There
will be other days,
other
voices and renewals.
Face
of springtime,
we
will suffer at daybreak.
Tr. Geoffrey Brock. The poem is addressed to a woman: Pavese was unlucky in love. The cats of course represent self-sufficiency, a quality for which (with more than a hint of anthropomorphizing) we humans admire and envy them. But does a cat know it's self-sufficient when so much of its existence is based round its dependence on humans? I think much of the poem is about this ambiguity: the woman's perceived self-sufficiency, and Pavese's despairing attraction to / repulsion from emotional autonomy.
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