Agave by Primo Levi

PN Review 58, November - December 1987

Agave

I am neither useful nor beautiful,
Have no pleasing colours or scents;
My roots eat into cement,
And my thorn-edged leaves -
Sharp as swords - protect me.
I'm mute. I speak only my plant language,
Hard for you, man, to understand:
An out-of-use language,
Exotic, since I come from far away,
From a cruel country
Full of wind, poisons and volcanoes.
I've waited many years before sending up
This towering desperate flower of mine,
Ugly, wooden, stiff, but stretching towards the sky.
It's our way of shouting:
I'll die tomorrow. Now do you understand?

Translated by Ruth Feldman

---

Primo Levi (1919 – 1987) was an Italian chemist, writer and Holocaust survivor. During his career he wrote several books, essays, poems and one novel. His best known work is If This is a Man (1947), which documented the year he spent in Auschwitz.

Ruth Feldman (1911 - 2001) was an American poet and translator. She was the author of five books of poetry and fifteen books of Italian translations, all of which were poetry, except for Primo Levi's concentration camp stories.

Subscribe to PN Review magazine at pnreview.co.uk.