Montale's 'Il Balcone'
This week I'm really pleased to be able to reproduce Ben Wilkinson's version of Eugenio Montale's short lyric 'Il Balcone'. The poem is a favourite of mine and one which I've tried translating before, though never as well as this. The Balcony after Eugenio Montale Remember those nights I’d linger below as you stood in the stars and we’d talk of leaving, as if auditioning for the part of Romeo and fluffing my lines as usual? Now on the opposite side I lean smoking and think on that handful of chances. The latticework of some distant tower block a chessboard that’s cleared after stalemate. Somewhere beyond a long flight’s expanses you spark a Zippo and light one up. Here it starts raining as I hang in the moment, turn towards this window’s squaring of dark. © Ben Wilkinson, reproduced by permission of the poet Ben Wilkinson was born in Stafford, Staffordshire in 1985. He read English and Philosophy at the University of Sheffield, and was awarded an MA in Writing...