And see, buds break

out of the tree a newer green in the grass

eases the heart:

bowed on the

slope

the tree seemed already dead,

And all I know of miracle;

And all I know of miracle;

and I am this watery cloud

that reflected today in the ditches,

the more blue, its fragment of heaven,

this green that splits the bark

that only last night was not there.

Specchio

“Ed ecco sul troncosi rompono gemme:un verde più nuovo dell’erbache il cuore riposa:il tronco pareva già morto,piegato sul botro.E tutto mi sa di miracolo;e sono quell’acqua di nubeche oggi rispecchia nei fossipiù azzurro il suo pezzo di cielo,quel verde che spacca la scorzache pure stanotte non c’era.” Salvatore Quasimodo

This poem, entitled “Specchio” (Mirror), was first published in “Acque e terre” in 1930:

It’s the beginning of spring, the seemingly dry branches of the trees are starting to get their first buds. Here's the bark splits, and sprouts the bud of a bright green, tender, more brilliant than grass.

It's the life that revives after the long winter hibernation, and the poet's heart has a sigh of relief “and the heart is resting,"

All this, for the poet ,is a miracle and he feels part of nature waking up and of the enchanting spectacle of a sky bluer than ever that is reflected in the ditches swollen by rain and in the green bud that tonight wasn’t there yet.

Salvatore Quasimodo (1901 - 1968) was an Italian poet exponent of Hermeticism, and has also received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1959.Quasimodo's poetry reveals his character and thoughtful human. His obscurity was developed in an original way; Quasimodo in fact adopted a language gaunt but not devoid of musical nuances and marked by a note of sadness. His famous poem is “and it is now evening”.

He was born in Modica (Sicily). After completing his engineering studies in Palermo, Quasimodo travelled around Italy. He worked for the Department of Civil Engineering, but started writing poetry in his twenties, and his first important collection of poems, Acque e terre (Waters and lands), was published in 1930. Quasimodo was part of the cultural circles of Firenze, Roma and Milano, and wrote for several literary magazines. He also translated the works of many different poets, from the Latin Catullus to the English Shakespeare, from the Greek Sophocles to the Chilean Neruda. Quasimodo was in Milano during the Second World war, the horrors of which he described in the collected poems “Giorno dopo giorno” (Day after day), published in 1947. He died on the 17th of June 1968 in Napoli.