November Poem

Pioggia is an Italian poem about rain by Giovanni Pascoli (1855 – 1912). Follow along in the original Italian and then read an English translation of the poem. In English we say “It’s raining cats and dogs” when it’s raining very hard. In Italian you say, “Water (will fall) from wash-basins.”


Pioggia

Cantava al buio d’aia in aia il gallo.
E gracidò nel bosco la cornacchia:
il sole si mostrava a finestrelle.
Il sol dorò la nebbia della macchia, poi si nascose;
e piovve a catinelle.
Poi tra il cantare delle raganelle guizzò sui campi un raggio lungo e giallo.
Stupìano i rondinotti dell’estate di quel sottile scendere di spille:
era un brusìo con languide sorsate e chiazze larghe e picchi a mille a mille;
poi singhiozzi, e gocciar rado di stille: di stille d’oro in coppe di cristallo.

English Translation: Rain

The rooster was singing from barnyard to barnyard in the dark
 And the carrion crow croaked in the woods:
The sun was sticking its nose (between the clouds)*
The sun gilded the mist in the brushwood,
Then it hid itself, and it rained cats and dogs.
Then, amid the singing of the frogs,
It flashed on the fields a long and yellow ray.
Young summer swallows were amazed
At that light descent of pins:
It was a buzz of languid downpours
And wide splashes and a lot of pattering drops;
Then in fits and starts, and a sparse trickling of drops:
 Drops of gold in crystal goblets.

*The translator wrote, “An old Italian proverb says: ’sole a finestrelle acqua a catinelle’. ‘Finestrelle’ are the ‘little windows’ between any two clouds. In Italian the whole expression is, as in many proverbs, elliptical. A possible translation would be something like: (When) the sun (shows) through little windows (between the clouds) Water (will fall) from wash-basins.”

Translated by Gian Carlo Macchi, Lisa Yannucci and Monique