Beyond the trembling veil of sight he disappeared

When with purple dusk the wind surged towards the sea.

In slow advancing night the dim boat sailed

To an island crowded by shadow-birds of Time:

The shouts of broken wings, of waves, beings

Falling not with their weight but with deathfulness

Of thickening gravity—they soon led him leeward.

His name drifted under the flood where fishes

Lived by an inexorable law; grief nor joy

But a strange devouring was at the base of things.

In that weird mansion of the belle of the gulf,

Filled with jewelled lights of hooded force,

The Past he met; there nude and hostile she lay.

From below her mattress a ghastly silence

Whispered of the queer atomic beginnings.

Then even the Nirvana of the sombre infinite

Made room for a greater Nothing; but suddenly,

As in a bright magic’s sequence, the Gleam-Eye

Opened to his soul all invisible widenesses

And took him to a sky where the solar waters flow.

RY Deshpande

Along with The Diver of the Deep Sea let us also read Umberto Saba’s Ulisse (Ulysses) translated by Thomas G Bergin from the original in Italian:

From days of youth I remember sailing

past the Dalmatian shore; the rugged islets

came forth from the waves. On them, but rarely,

sea birds, intent on prey, would alight; the beaches,

kelp-encrusted, gave slippery footing. Under

the sun they sparkled, bright as emeralds.

The tide rising or the dark blotting them out,

barks bearing leeward gave them wide berth,

fleeing their treachery. And now my kingdom

is that land of No-man. The harbour kindles

its lights for others. I turn out to sea,

once more impelled by heart untamed and love,

laden with sorrow, of the life of man.

Contemporary Italian Poetry: An Anthology edited by Carlo L Golino, Foreword by Salvatore Quasimodo.