GIACOMO LEOPARDI
Cantos for the Crestfallen

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II.

The sun that warms this rotting, blooming earth 

Knows nothing of the blazing death which scorches 

The summit of things where I first wept for you.

Yet still I call it sun, name brightness what I cannot

Look upon without dying, call annihilation what

I cannot not expire from by weeping and sighing for.

What made me both think of bottling those drops 

And never really consider doing so? Who made me 

Know the melodrama even more true at its falsest?

Later that day none of us needed relics to weep over, 

When our silly bodies were a secret golden ossuary, 

And witty laughter the worst sorrow we could stomach.

A sweetest meal of sighs we made. Now the asymptotic 

Leftovers infinitely remain around the earth like seeds 

Of a new life that lives everywhere except this world.

A life not living, more a truly breathless realm beyond 

Beyond, an al di là far cooler than any philosopher’s,
A place composing each here into the mark of its there.

Yes, it was a sun or special kind of luminous void 

That my tears veiled, that I-we walked away toward, 

A gold that also the blind must shield their eyes from.