With Eleanor (May 2009)

Umberto Saba, The Goat

Umberto Saba, The Goat


I talked to a goat.
She was alone in a pasture, and tethered.
Stuffed with grass, soaked
by the rain, she bleated.

That monotonous bleating was brother
to my sorrow. And I answered, first
in jest, then because sorrow is eternal,
has one voice and never changes.
I heard this voice in the wails
of a solitary goat.

In a goat with a Semitic face,
I heard all other pain lamenting,
all other lives.


(translated by George Hochfield and Leonard Nathan)