Last Voyage: Selected Poems of Giovanni Pascoli

II. The Wing

101 II. The Wing And the well-traveled hero answered: “All I tell you is the truth, without any twists. I am already known to you men, but there are men, mortal, yes, but like gods from heaven, who do not move on their feet like the slow oxen, shifting from one knee to another, but work their oars like the wings of birds, birds that have the vast blue of the sea under them. On my journeys I have seen, with these very eyes, stars blossoming in a broken sky, with my guiding constellation, Ursa Major, while the driver whistles in the dark distance, and light, golden wheels bob gently up the flickering gravel of our blue road. Our wings do not always carry us between one sky and the other: often a giant wind takes us: in the air, there’s a loud snarl from huge nostrils and a crazy wind grabs us and drives us, but with my powerful hand I hold the reins and control our pace. The sea god does not hate us, as the land hates you, though you continue, broken, but hopeful. But everything comes to an end: Now I sacrifice to the king, a small bull, a lamb, and a boar; though there they honor only an unknown god.” And the other man, the listener, answers, surprised: “The unknown is a great and even greater god. Come now to a king who has a soft heart 102 oggi, che il grano gli avanzò le corbe. Così l’eroe divino in una forra selvosa il remo suo piantò, la lieve ala incrostata dalla salsa gromma. Al dio sdegnato per il suo Ciclope, egli uccise un torello ed un agnello e terzo un verro montator di scrofe; e poi discese, e insieme a lui più lune vennero, e l’una dopo l’altra ognuna sé, girando tra roccie aspre, consunse. L’ultima, piena tremolò sul mare riscintillante, e su la bianca sabbia, piccola e nera gli mostrò la nave, e i suoi compagni, ch’attendean guardando a monte, muti. Ed ei salpò. Sbalzare vide ancora le rote auree del Carro sopra le ghiaie dell’azzurra strada: rivide il fumo salir su, rivide Itaca scabra, e la sua grande casa. Dove il timone al focolar sospese. 103 today and whose grain fills the bushels.” So the divine hero plants his oar, that light wing, encrusted with sea salt, in a woody ravine. To the god despised by the Cyclops, he offers these three: a lamb and a boar mounting a sow; and afterwards he went down and many moons crossed the sky, one after the other, rotating over the rough cliffs, until each of them burnt out. Finally, when the sparkling sea is above high tide, surrounding the black ship on the white sand, and the prodigy and his companions, who were waiting and watching from the mountains, are thoughtful, they set sail. The hero sees the golden wheel of the chariot toss up gravel on his blue path again: again he sees the salt spray, sees rugged Ithaca and his own spacious longed-for home. And there he would hang the rudder by the hearth. ...