Cattafi was one of the generation of post-war Italian poets I was inspired to read at university in the 1980s. He lived through the second world war and made sense of that cataclysm by writing elliptical and mysterious poetry which alludes rather than lectures. This poem contains one of my favourite lines in all poetry - 'pasto a tarme felice' - which sounds so beautiful in Italian and sits in this weird image of Eden's angel eating willing moths for food.
As with all the poetry I like, one is never quite sure what is going on. Do the wingspans refer to the wings of angels or to the biodiversity of the planet? Certainly, Cattafi was probably referencing the suffering of the 1940s but I feel it is equally allusive to the suffering on the horizon with the climate catastrophe with its talk of 'majestic bones [and] flies extinguished in the shadow of time'.
And what to make of that last line?
E l'apertura d'ali?
Esse varia; ve n'é
di micron, di centrimetri, di metri.
Dipende dal modello, dalla materia, dalla
forza motrice; il motivo, la quota da raggiungere.
Ripiegate, richiuse, accantonate
sotto un serto verdissimo, nell'Eden
pasto a tarme felice;
oppure sottoghiaccio coi relitti, ossa
regali, mammut, mosche spente
in fondo all'ombra del tempo.
Camminammo piú a lungo che potemmo,
spesso vedemmo, alto nella memoria, doloroso,
un bianco stormo di brandelli ... (appena
un gioco, un aiuto, una finzione
se sulla scena del deserto il fuoco
s'apprende alla pelle delle prede
se il gelo aggruma nomi disumani).
Un battito d'ali su per le vaste
pareti delle memoria non ci sottrae
all'ombre che ci seguono; la iena,
il lupo, gli angeli
abietti dall'obliquo incedere.
-
And the wingspan?
It varies; it can be
in microns, in centimetres, in metres.
It depends on the model, the material, the
driving force; the purpose, the height to be reached.
Folded, closed up, sheltered
beneath a wreath of bright green, in Eden
feeding on happy moths;
or under ice with the detritus, majestic
bones, mammoths, flies extinguished
in the depths of the shadows of time.
We travelled longer that we were able,
we often saw, high in the memory, painful,
a white bundle of rags ... (hardly
a game, a relief, a fiction
if on the desert stage fire
clings to the victim's skin
if ice curdles inhuman names).
A beating of wings up the vast
walls of memory doesn't free us
from the shadows who pursue us; the hyena,
the wolf, the angels
abject from their creeping pace.