The eel

The eel, the siren of 
icy waters which leaves the Baltic 
to reach our waters, reach 
the estuaries, the rivers 
deeply beneath whose hostile spate it mounts, 
from branch to branch and then 
from fibril to fibril, attenuated, 
ever more inland, ever more into the heart 
of limestone rock, worming 
through troughs of slime until one day 
a light slanting from chestnut boughs 
ignites the slither in stagnant sumps, 
in the ditches which descend 
from the cliffs of the Apennines to the Romagna, 
eel, torch and lash, 
arrow of Love on earth 
which only our gullies or seared 
creeks of the Pyrenees conduct 
to fertile paradises; 
green soul which seeks 
life there where 
gnaw only drought and desolation, 
the spark which says 
all begins where all seems 
charred to carbon, a sunken stump, 
brief rainbow, twin 
to what is brightly clasped in your jewel-eyes 
and glows there undefiled among the sons 
of men, bedded into your mud, can you 
not believe her a sister? 

(Eugenio Montale, La bufera
Translated from the Italian by Alan Marshfield)