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Eugenio Montale (translated by Jonathan Galassi) La Belle Dame Sans Merci
Surely the cantonal seagulls have waited in vain
for the bread crumbs I tossed onto your balcony so you’d hear their cries though you’re shut up in sleep.
Today we both missed our appointment
and our breakfast is going cold among piles of useless books for me and for you the leavings of I don’t know what: calendars, cases, phials and creams.
Stupefying your face keeps on persisting
above the morning’s bird-lime ground; but a life without wings can’t reach it and its suffocated fire is the glow of my cigarette lighter. This poem was translated from the original Italian.
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