Trieste - Umberto Saba

I traversed the whole city.
Then climbed a hill
crowded at first, in the end deserted,
closed off by a little wall,
a corner where I alone
sit; and it seems to me where it ends
the city ends.

Trieste has a sullen
grace, If you like,
it’s a delinquent, bitter, voracious,
with blue eyes and hands too clumsy
to offer flowers;
like love
possessed by jealousy.
From this hill I discover every church,
every street, follow them to the cluttered shore,
or the stony slope, on whose
summit a house, the last one, clings.

Circling,
surrounding all these things
a strange air, a tormented air,
the native air.
My city, alive in every part,
has left this corner for me, for my life,
pensive, and quiet.

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Umberto Saba (1883 - 1957) Italy
Translated by A. S. Kline
Source: Five 20th Century Italian Poets