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Singing
Translation by Marco Sonzogni, Harry Thomas
…But when we began to sing
Our songs, senseless and good,
It seemed that everything
Stood as it once had stood.
The days were merely days.
Seven made a week.
Killing we thought was wicked.
Of dying we didn’t speak.
The months sped by so fast,
With too many to come for complaints!
Again we were only young:
Not martyrs, the shamed, or saints.
We had these thoughts and others
As long as we could sing.
But it’s all hard to explain,
Being a cloudlike thing.
3 January 1946
(Cf. Siegfried Sassoon, ‘Everyone Sang’.)
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- About the translation:
- » Read translator's notes
- Poet:
- Primo Levi
- Translator:
- Marco Sonzogni, Harry Thomas
- Original language:
- Italian
- Issue:
- Series 3 No.15 - Poetry and the State
About the author
Original poet
Primo Levi
Primo Levi (1919-1987) lived most of his life in Turin. During the Nazi occupation of Italy, he joined a partisan group in the...
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Marco Sonzogni
Marco Sonzogni was educated in Pavia, Dublin, Wellington and Auckland. An academic, poet and literary translator, he lives in...
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Harry Thomas
Harry Thomas has had his work published in dozens of magazines. His books include Selected Poems of Thomas Hardy and Montale i...
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