Today we read Eri dritta e felice, by Leonardo Sinisgalli. In general I prefer poems that have a clear metrical structure, but sometimes one comes along that will catch my attention even without. Such is the case with these verses by Leonardo Sinisgalli. The poem opens with the verb “to be”, in the past tense. This is a poem of memory. Of childhood, as we learn later, or at least one assumes so, because the poet and his female friend are portrayed walking around the fields barefoot. So, in the past, she was straight and happy, standing at the threashold of a house that didn’t restrain her, but was rather the starting point for their adventures together, in a landscape of sun and light. This probably means that she is not straight now, but bent; and that it’s not summer (the season of wasps) anymore. But the memory is still blinding with light. The ending of the poem, though without rhymes, is all a play of assonances and consonances and similar devices (midolla/allora, fossi/sassi, ardore/sole). It is also striking how the poem manages to be both intimate and detached: the author uses the impersonal si (“one”) instead of “we”, as if he was observing her from afar. The original: Eri dritta e felice
sulla porta che il vento
apriva alla campagna.
Intrisa di luce
stavi ferma nel giorno,
al tempo delle vespe d’oro
quando al sambuco
si fanno dolci le midolla.
Allora s’andava scalzi
per i fossi, si misurava l’ardore
del sole dalle impronte
lasciate sui sassi.\ The music in this episode is Alessandro Marcello’s Oboe Concerto in D minor, S. Z799, recorded by the Orchestre de chambre de la Sarre (in the public domain).
