Maybe one morning

Maybe one morning, walking in a dry air of glass

I’ll look back and see the miracle happen:

Blank, the void behind,

Like a drunkard’s terror


Then, like on a screen, houses, hills, trees will rush

And cram together to stage the usual trick.

But too late, and I’ll leave and walk on silent

Amid men who turn not back, with my secret

Forse un mattino - by Eugenio Montale

Forse un mattino andando in un’aria di vetro,
arida, rivolgendomi vedrò compirsi il miracolo:
il nulla alle mie spalle, il vuoto dietro
di me, come un terrore di ubriaco.

Poi come s’uno schermo, s’accamperanno di gitto
alberi case colli per l’inganno consueto.
Ma sarà troppo tardi; ed io me n’andrò zitto
tra gli uomini che non si voltano, col mio segreto.

Maybe one morning, walking in dry, glassy air,
I’ll turn and see the miracle occur:
nothing at my back, the void
behind me, with a drunkard’s terror.

Then, as if on a screen, trees houses hills
will suddenly assemble for the usual illusion.
But it will be too late, and I’ll walk on silent
among the men who don’t look back, with my secret.

(from Eugenio Montale, Collected Poems 1920-1954, bilingual edition, translated and annotated by Jonathan Galassi, Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, New York, 1998)

Among my favourite authors, and among the most groud-breaking Italian poets, Montale touched my imagination and permanently changed my way to look at poetry.
I am in love with this very famous piece for a reason you might find strange: it reminds me of cyberpunk, or in better words, it sounds to me like the writing of a poet from the future much more than from the past: its references to screens and emptyness (how not to think to cyberspace, to some scenes from "the matrix"), the jaded persuasion of inhabiting an illusion...I make very far-fetched links probably hehehe...


If you wish to find out more about Montale's poetry, you could start from here