Wednesday 16 March 2016

Cesare Pavese: The Cats Will Know



Rain will fall again
on your smooth pavement,
a light rain like
a breath or a step.
The breeze and the dawn
will flourish again
when you return,
as if beneath your step.
Between flowers and sills
the cats will know.

There will be other days,
there will be other voices.
You will smile alone.
The cats will know.
You will hear words
old and spent and useless
like costumes left over
from yesterday’s parties.

You too will make gestures.
You’ll answer with words—
face of springtime,
you too will make gestures.

The cats will know,
face of springtime;
and the light rain
and the hyacinth dawn
that wrench the heart of him
who hopes no more for you—
they are the sad smile
you smile by yourself.

There will be other days,
other voices and renewals.
Face of springtime,
we will suffer at daybreak.


Tr. Geoffrey Brock. The poem is addressed to a woman: Pavese was unlucky in love. The cats of course represent self-sufficiency, a quality for which (with more than a hint of anthropomorphizing) we humans admire and envy them. But does a cat know it's self-sufficient when so much of its existence is based round its dependence on humans? I think much of the poem is about this ambiguity: the woman's perceived self-sufficiency, and Pavese's despairing attraction to / repulsion from emotional autonomy.

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