Infinitive by Giacomo Leopardi

I’ve always loved this lonesome hill

And this hedge that hides

The entire horizon, almost, from sight.

But sitting here in a daydream, I picture

The boundless spaces away out there, silences

Deeper than human silence, an unfathomable hush

In which my heart is hardly a beat

From fear. And hearing the wind

Rush rustling through these bushes,

I pit its speech against infinite silence--

And a notion of eternity floats to mind,

And the dead seasons, and the season

Beating here and now, and the sound of it. So,

In this immensity my thoughts all drown;

And it’s easeful to be wrecked in seas like these.

From “Leopardi: Selected Poems” by Giacomo Leopardi, translated by Eamon Grennan (Princeton University Press: 94 pp., $9.95 paper). Copyright 1997 Reprinted by permission.