The Only Rose

Translated by John Naughton from New and Selected Poems

I
It's snowing, it's returning to a town
Where, as I discover as I go through
Empty streets I come upon by chance,
I might have happily lived some other childhood.
Beneath the snowflakes I notice façades
More beautiful than anything in this world.
Among us, only Alberti, then Sangallo,
At San Biagio, in the most intense room
That desire has ever built, have approached
This perfection, this absence.
And so I gaze avidly
At these masses the snow hides from me.
I seek, above all, in the wandering
Whiteness, those pediments that rise
To a higher level of appearance.
They tear apart the mist, it is as though,
With a hand freed from weight,
The mortal architect had brought to life,
In a single floral stroke,
The form sought for centuries by
The pain of being born into matter.

II
And up there I cannot tell if it is still
Life, or only joy, that stands out
Against this sky no longer of our world.
Oh you builders,
Not so much of place as of renewed hope,
What is there in the depths of these walls
That open before me? What I see
Along the walls are only empty niches,
Partly stone, partly the absence of stone,
From which, thanks to symmetry,
The weight of being born into exile is lifted.
But snow has gathered there, has piled up,
I draw near to one of them, the lowest,
I bring down a bit of its light
And all at once it is the meadow I walked in at ten,
The bees are buzzing,
What I have in my hands, these flowers, these shadows,
Is it almost honey, is it snow?

III
And then I go on until I am beneath an archway,
The snowflakes are swirling, blotting out
The line between the outside and this room
Where lamps are lit: these, too,
A kind of snow, which hesitates
Between the high and the low, in this night.
It is as though I were at a second threshold.
And beyond, the same sound of bees
In the sound of the snow. What the countless
Summer bees were saying
Seems reflected in the infinite of the lamps.
And I would like
To run, as in the time of the bee, seeking
With my foot the supple ball, for perhaps
I am sleeping, and dreaming, and wandering along
The paths of childhood.

IV
But what I am looking at is hardened snow,
The flakes which have stolen onto the flagstones
And piled up at the base of the columns
Left and right, and far ahead in the dusk.
Absurdly, my eyes can only see the arc
That this mud draws on the stone.
My only thought is for what has
No name, no meaning. Oh my friends,
Alberti, Brunelleschi, Sangallo,
Palladio who beckons from the other shore,
I do not betray you, I still go forward,
The purest form is always the one
Pierced by the mist that fades away,
Trampled snow is the only rose.