Eugenio Montale - The Eel 汉译

The eel, the

siren of sleety seas, abandoning

The Baltic for our waters,

out estuaries, our

freshets — to thresh upcurrent inder the brunt

of the flood, sunk deep,

from brook to brook, and then

trickle to trickle dwindling,

more inner always, always more in the heart

of the living rock,

needing in ruts of the mud, until, one day,

explosion of splendor from the chestnut groves

kindles a flicker in deadwater sumps,

in ditches pitched

from ramparts of the Apennine to Romagna;

eel:torch and whip;

arrow of love on earth,

which nothing but our gorges or bone-dry

gutters of the Pyrenees usher back

to edens of fertility;

green soul that probes

for life where only fevering heat or devastation preys,

spark that says

the whole commences when the whole would seem

charred black, an old stick buried;

brief rainbow, twin

to that within yout lashes’ dazzle, that

you keep alive, inviolate, among

the sons of men, steeped in your mire — in this

not recognize a sister?