originale
To E. T.
I SLUMBERED with your poems on my breast
Spread open as I dropped them half-read through
Like dove wings on a figure on a tomb
To see, if in a dream they brought of you,
I might not have the chance I missed in life
Through some delay, and call you to your face
First soldier, and then poet, and then both,
Who died a soldier-poet of your race.
I meant, you meant, that nothing should remain
Unsaid between us, brother, and this remained—
And one thing more that was not then to say:
The Victory for what it lost and gained.
You went to meet the shell’s embrace of fire
On Vimy Ridge; and when you fell that day
The war seemed over more for you than me,
But now for me than you—the other way.
How over, though, for even me who knew
The foe thrust back unsafe beyond the Rhine,
If I was not to speak of it to you
And see you pleased once more with words of mine?
traduzione
A E.T.
Mi sono addormentato col tuo libro
sul petto, come ali di colomba
incise su una bara, per vedere
se a ritrovarti in sogno non soccomba
la possibilità, mancata allora,
almeno adesso di chiamarti in viso
Soldato prima, poi Poeta, entrambi,
tu, Milite-poeta nostro, ucciso.
Promisi, promettevi: niente resti
non detto fra fratelli – ed era finto,
rimase questo, e neanche ci dicemmo:
del Vincere si sconta il perso e il vinto.
Al fronte di Vimy ti abbracciò il fuoco
e quando sei caduto quel mattino
per te più che per me finì la guerra.
E adesso che per me, son io il meschino.
E come può finire, se anche so
che pavido il nemico rientra al Reno,
se non te ne racconto ancora un verso
per soddisfarti un’altra volta almeno?
1923, Robert Frost ✍️
Approfondimento: Edward Thomas, Robert Frost and the road to war | Poetry | The Guardian.
bibliografia
Frost, Robert. New Hampshire: A Poem with Notes and Grace Notes. Henry Holt & Company, 1923, https://alphabetica.it/bid/RMR0274171.
Frost, Robert. “To E. T.” New Hampshire: A Poem with Notes and Grace Notes, Henry Holt & Company, 1923, p. 83, https://archive.org/details/NewHampshireRobertFrost1923/page/n97/mode/2up.
Frost, Robert. Fuoco e ghiaccio. Edited by Ottavio Fatica, Translated by Silvia Bre, Adelphi, 2022, https://alphabetica.it/bid/MIL1012730.
Hollis, Matthew. “Edward Thomas, Robert Frost and the Road to War.” The Guardian, 29 July 2011, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/jul/29/robert-frost-edward-thomas-poetry.
