Pioggia is an Italian poem about rain by Giovanni Pascoli (1855 – 1912). Below you can listen to a recording, follow along in the original Italian and then read an English translation of the poem.

First a note about the illustration, in English we say “It’s raining cats and dogs” when it’s raining very hard. Hence the drawing of cats and dogs falling from a rain cloud. In Italian they say, “Water (will fall) from wash-basins.”

Listen to an MP3 Recording of Pioggia

Pioggia
(Italian)

Cantava al buio d’aia in aia il gallo.
E gracidò nel bosco la cornacchia:
il sole si mostrava a finestrelle.
Il sol dorò la nebbia della macchia,
poi si nascose; e piovve a catinelle.
Poi tra il cantare delle raganelle
guizzò sui campi un raggio lungo e giallo.

Stupìano i rondinotti dell’estate
di quel sottile scendere di spille:
era un brusìo con languide sorsate
e chiazze larghe e picchi a mille a mille;
poi singhiozzi, e gocciar rado di stille:
di stille d’oro in coppe di cristallo.

English Translation:

Rain

The rooster was singing from barnyard to barnyard in the dark
And the carrion crow croaked in the woods:
The sun was sticking its nose (between the clouds)*
The sun gilded the mist in the brushwood,
Then it hid itself, and it rained cats and dogs.
Then, amid the singing of the frogs,
It flashed on the fields a long and yellow ray.

Young summer swallows were amazed
At that light descent of pins:
It was a buzz of languid downpours
And wide splashes and a lot of pattering drops;
Then in fits and starts, and a sparse trickling of drops:
Drops of gold in crystal goblets.

*Gian Carlos wrote, “An old Italian proverb says: ‘sole a finestrelle acqua a catinelle’. ‘Finestrelle’ are the ‘little windows’ between any two clouds. In Italian the whole expression is, as in many proverbs, elliptical. A possible translation would be something like:

(When) the sun (shows) through little windows (between the clouds)
Water (will fall) from wash-basins.”

Translated by Gian Carlo Macchi, Lisa Yannucci and Monique Palomares.

Thanks so much Gian Carlo for your help!

Mama Lisa

Image: Lila and Lisa