Written by Eugenio Montale and translated, from the Italian, by Jonathan Galassi:
–The hope of even seeing you again
was leaving me;and I asked myself if this which shuts me out
from every sense of you, this screen of images,
is marked by death, or if, out of the past,
but deformed and diminished, it involves
some flash of yours:(under the arcades, at Modena,
a servant in gold braid dragged
two jackals on a leash).
(From Collected Poems 1920-1954 by Eugenio Montale, translated and edited by Jonathan Galassi ©1998, 2012 by Jonathan Galassi. Used by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC. Photo by Flickr user timsamoff)
The Dish 