Before Easter

Summary

Naples

Tomorrow, in these alleys that have sunk

in darkness, past some piled-up tenement

and pressing toward the harbor down below,

the golden bright processions mean to curl.

The bedclothes that have graced some keepsake trunk —

not rags — will want to luff when they unfurl

and hang from balconies in steep ascent

(they'll seem reflected in some river's flow).

Today, though, hawkers hammer every door,

all day, to sell the loads with which they're packed.

All day, the people buy and haul and drag,

and still they can't deplete the teeming stalls.

At one corner, on display: a hacked-

out ox, who shows the world his carcass-walls.

Each leg's end wears a little paper flag.

Piled stock — a thousand offerings’ worth, or more —

weighs down the tables, hangs in rings from pegs,

pushes and bends and bursts past all the jambs

of twilit doorways. And before the yawning

melons, lines stretch out in loaves of bread.

Hungry for moving: things that lie there dead.

Then stiller yet: young cocks who'll crow no dawning,

and then, suspended goats, hung by their legs.

And even less alive: the silent lambs

that boys sling on their shoulders like a cross;

that nod compliantly with every pace,

while on the wall behind the glass case closing

in the Spanish Virgin, diadems

and clasps are shimmering. Each silver boss

anticipates the light that is to come.

But in a window, as he bites his thumb,

a monkey runs amok, his stratagems

extravagant as what he is exposing,

gestures wholly, wholly out of place.

Der Balkon

Neapel

Von der Enge, oben, des Balkones

angeordnet wie von einem Maler

und gebunden wie zu einem Strauß

alternder Gesichter und ovaler,

klar im Abend, sehn sie idealer,

rührender und wie für immer aus.

Diese aneinander angelehnten

Schwestern, die, als ob sie sich von weit

ohne Aussicht nacheinander sehnten,

lehnen, Einsamkeit an Einsamkeit;

und der Bruder mit dem feierlichen

Schweigen, zugeschlossen, voll Geschick,

doch von einem sanften Augenblick

mit der Mutter unbemerkt verglichen;

und dazwischen, abgelebt und länglich,

langst mit keinem mehr verwandt,

einer Greisin Maske, unzugänglich,

wie im Fallen von der einen Hand

aufgehalten, während eine zweite