Eugenio Montale is one of the few modern Italian poets who, while not being obligatorily taught at school, is known by heart by many in Italy.
Many, including possibly me, will argue that Montale caused entire generations to consider poetry something you don't necessarily have to understand, and where words are more important than meanings, eventually causing the production of tons of wasted poetical efforts. In fact at his beginnings Montale was considered the bearer of a local variation of "hermetism" that could be fully appreciated only if you were very well learned. This had many reasons to be, including the upcoming Mussolini's fascist regime and its censorship. The famous poem "don't ask us for the word" is basically one of the ways by which an hermetist poet could tell Mussolini to fuck off.
Anyway Montale's poems, literary or not, always have surprising ways to create music in the verse, which cracks and fiddles continuously producing unexpected associations of words that make his true genius, comparable for musical talent to Dante's.
Later Montale's poetry became more direct, although the literary approach never abandoned him. But it is better not to forget that literariness is the disgrace of any European writer and it is very hard to shake off.

The first here is one of Montale's most popular poems (and not a particularly literary one). Italo Calvino wrote an important essay about it in 1976. The second is also a very famous poem of his. They have no title.

*

Possibly one morning going in a glassy air
dry, turning over I'll see the miracle perform:
nothingness at my back, void behind
me, terrorized as a drunk.

Then like if on a screen, will be camping straight off
trees houses hills for the customary deceit.
But it will be too late; and I will go silent
amongst the men who don't turn, with my secret.

Forse un mattino andando in un'aria di vetro,
arida, rivolgendomi, vedrò compirsi il miracolo:
il nulla alle mie spalle, il vuoto dietro
di me, con un terrore di ubriaco.

Poi come s'uno schermo, s'accamperanno di gitto
alberi case colli per l'inganno consueto.
Ma sarà troppo tardi; ed io me ne andrò zitto
tra gli uomini che non si voltano, col mio segreto.

*

Often the evil of life I've met :
it was the strangled creek gurgling,
it was the curling over of the parched
leave, it was the slumped horse.

Good I haven't known, outside the prodigy
disclosed by divine Indifference :
it was the statue in the somnolence
at noon, and the cloud, and the high arisen hawk.

Spesso il male di vivere ho incontrato :
era il rivo strozzato che gorgoglia,
era l'incartocciarsi della foglia
riarsa, era il cavallo stramazzato.

Bene non seppi, fuori del prodigio
che schiude la divina Indifferenza :
era la statua nella sonnolenza
del meriggio, e la nuvola, e il falco alto levato.

(back to 7 poets.)