A turkey-oak two hundred years old now
no one has pollarded. Beneath it
there live vipers – woody elbows ache
against the back. And one night
upon the roots, you rebelled, and with such violence
as to remain offended, inside,
at male amour-propre. When the trunk's
sawn through (though it seems impossible
it'll befall quite thus)
and we can precisely count its years
in the pith's circles, no one will ever more murmur
of my attempt to love you.
                                                            This solitary turkey-oak
bursts into leaf, belligerent and tough,
and its germinal cells have adapted a sex
coming ravished by wind from the hills – 
it's surely a great creator of oxygen
and acorns, and even, I'd swear,
aware of our presence. Most discreet witness
thank goodness, but with a long memory: interior time
for this woody shape is of the slowest – 
when in springtime there sprout the new
indented leaves
only then do the last ones succumb, in strong wind,
crackling, from the year before.

1999

Translation from the Italian
By Peter Robinson