Valentino

A translation of "VALENTINO" by Giovanni Pascoli (1855-1912)

translation from Italian by Luigi Pagano

Oh! Valentino in your pristine new suit
you look reborn like the may hawthorn.
but your bare feet, scratched by brambles,
only wear the skin with which you were born,
the only shoes that your mother gave you
that from day one you've continually worn.

They cost nothing unlike your new garment
which was so expensive your mother emptied
the whole content of a tinkling piggy bank.
It will take more than a month for the hens
to lay enough eggs to be sold to replenish
the bank balance that to zero shrank.

Think of January when the heat from a log
wasn't enough to warm you; you shivered.
The chickens sang: an egg!, here is an egg!
and a single egg is what they delivered.
Then the hens brooded and March arrived;
you, thin peasant, though famished, survived.

You, with naked feet, were only half-dressed
like a feathered bird, who is barefoot too,
and who, having come from the sea, hops
from branch to branch among cherry trees,
and doesn't know that besides pecking, singing
and loving, there could be some other happiness.

©Luigi Pagano