Autumn colour

In the rain at Aira Force. The blurry bracken gives some idea of the windiness of the day.

I discovered from the Scottish Poetry Library's website that it is world Italian language week and rather liked this poem ...

Infinity by Giacomo Leopardi

We are old friends, this lonely hill and I –
and this hedge too, shutting out from sight
so much of the horizon’s farthest reach.
but here I sit and brood, and boundless are
the spaces spread beyond it, unearthlier
the silences, and deep, so deep the stillness:
I build these in my thought; build this brief truce
for the heart’s fears. And when I hear the wind
moving and ruffling through these leaves, I set
its voice against that infinite thing, that silence:
and I look back over eternity,
and the dead seasons, and this season here
with its life, and the sound of life. And so my thought
drowns in the midst of this immensity;
I never foundered in a sea so sweet.


translated by Edwin Morgan