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Issue 9:
October
2007

translations and adaptations title imageFeatured Writer Index

Tolerance
What's Going Through Deola's Mind
Southern Seas


Three poems by Cesare Pavese

tolerance title image

NOISELESSLY IT RAINS UPON THE MEADOW OF THE SEA.
Not a soul passes along the unswept streets.
And down from the train steps a solitary female:
from beneath her coat flashes a stretch of silk
and legs disappearing inside a dingy doorway.

The whole town seems submerged. Dusk drips cold
across every threshold, and here and there a chimney
tinges shadow with bluish smoke. Chequered gold
by chequered gold, lights are switched on, including hers
behind the half-open shutters of the blackened house.

Come morning, a sunstruck sea as the cold continues.
A woman, half-dressed, is washing off her lipstick
at the fountain, streaking its water pink. Her hair
is a garish ginger, not unlike the orange skin
that scatters the ground. Stretched there with her wet look,
she plays the matinee idol for a wide-eyed urchin.
Around the square bleary women fling the shutters open –
their husbands still dozing somewhere within ...

When evening comes back, the rain accompanies it,
hissing over newly-lit braziers. Fanning the coals,
the wives glance across at the blackened house,
the deserted fountain. But that set of shutters is battened
tight; only inside there stands a bed, and on it
a red-head is busy, striving to make ends meet.
Night brings rest to the town and all its citizens
except the red-head whom dawn’ll find at the fountain,
washing off her lipstick, soaping her arms and legs.

First published in Modern Poetry in Translation

tolleranza title image

PIOVE SENZA RUMORE SUL PRATO DEL MARE.
Per le luride strade non passa nessuno.
È discesa dal treno una femmina sola:
ma il cappotto si è vista la chiara sottana
e le gambe sparire nella porta annerita.

Si direbbe un paese sommerso. La sera
stilla fredda su tutte le soglie, e le case
spandon fumo azzurino nell’ombra. Rossastre
le finestre s’accendono. S’accende una luce
tra le imposte accostate nella casa annerita.

L’indomani fa freddo e c’è sole sul mare.
Una donna in sottana si strofina la bocca
all fonte, e la schiuma è rosata. Ha capelli
biondo-ruvido, simile alle bucce d’arancia
sparse in terra. Protesa alla fonte, sogguarda
un monello nerastro che la fissa incantato.
Donne fosche spalancano imposte sulla piazza
- i mariti sonnechiano ancora, nel buio.

Quando torna la sera, riprende la pioggia
scoppiettante sui molte bracieri. Le spose,
ventilando i carboni, danno occhiate alla casa
annerita e alla fonte deserta. La casa
ha le imposte accecate, ma dentro c’è un letto,
e sul letto una bionda si guadagna la vita.
Tutto quanto il paese riposa la notte,
tutto, tranne la bionda, che si lava al mattino.

First published in Lavorare Stanca, 1936

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what's going through deola's mind title image

DEOLA WHILES AWAY THE MORNING BY SITTING IN A CAFE
and nobody even sees her. At his hour throughout the city
everyone’s scuttling under still cool sunlight. She, however,
luxuriates in a lack of business, smokes, breathes air
mostly her own. Back at the pensione she’d be asleep by order,
if only to regather her powers for another stint
upon the duvet filthied by the boots of customers,
those pains in the spine. Things on your own are different.
Work’s less like slavery, something you can take
or leave. The gentleman yesterday, waking her early,
kissed her, then insisted she accompany him to the station
and see him off (‘Darling, I’d stay with you here in Turin
if I could.’
)
             She’s a bit dazed, but otherwise feels fine,
in freedom a newfound pleasure, time to drink her milk
and nibble brioches. This morning she’s half-way to being ‘Signora’
and, if she spies passers-by, it’s merely to stave of boredom.
At the pensione she’d be catching some duty sleep, such a fug
in there, it’s small wonder the Madame goes out walking.
To work the local dives and nightspots requires assets
that, at the age of thirty, are in increasingly short supply.

Deola sits readjusting her profile in the mirror,
scrutinising herself in the cool clear glass. A bit off-colour,
but it has nothing to do the hang of smoke. She furrows her brow.
You need a steel will like Mari’s if you’re to survive
back there (‘because, dear girl, men visit the pensione
to satisfy the very yearnings which girlfriends and wives
don’t want to know about’)
and yet Mari would work
tirelessly, with brio even, and somehow kept her health.
Deola doesn’t pay the passers going by the cafe
another thought now she works evenings only, contenting herself
with leisurely pick-ups at a local dance-place. Glancing
at a customer, playing footsie, she lets the orchestra
orchestrate her new career as an actress in a love scene
with some rich young lead. A single pick-up per night
and she can make do. (‘Maybe yesterday’s gentleman
will take me with him after all.’)
To stay alone from choice,
and sit inside the cafe. To be one’s own woman.

First published in Modern Poetry in Translation 18, 2001

pensieri di Deola title image

DEOLA PASSA IL MATTINO SEDUTA AL CAFFÈ
e nessuno la guarda. A quest’ora in città corron tutti
sotto il sole ancor fresco dell’alba. Non cerca nessuno
neanche Deola, ma fuma pacata e respira il mattino.
Fin che è stata in pensione, ha dovuto dormire a quest’ora
per rifarsi le forze: la stuoia sul letto
la sporcavano con le scarpacce soldati e operai,
i clienti che fiaccan la schiena. Ma, sole, è diverso:
si può fare un lavoro piu fine, con poca fatica.
Il signore di ieri, svegliandola presto,
l’ha baciata e condotta (mi fermerei, cara,
a Torino con te, se potessi) con sé alla stazione
a augurargli buon viaggio.
                             È intontita, ma fresca, stavolta,
e le piace esser libera, Deola, e bere il suo latte
e mangiare brioches. Stamattina è una mezza signora
e, se guarda I passanti, fa solo per non annoiarsi.
A quest’ora in pensione si dorme e c’è puzza di chiuso
- la padrona va a spasso – è da stupide stare la dentro.
Per girare la sera i locali, ci vuole presenza
e in pensione, a trent’anni, quel po’ che ne resta, si è perso.

Deola siede mostrando il profilo a uno specchio
e si guarda nel fresco del vetro. Un po’ pallida in faccia:
non è il fumo che stagni. Corruga le ciglia.
Ci vorrebbe la voglia che aveva Mari, per durare
in pensione (perché, cara donna, gli uomini
vengon qui per cavarsi capricci che non glieli toglie
ne la moglie ne l’innamorata) e Marì lavorava
instancabile, piena di brio e godeva salute.
I passanti davanti al caffè non distraggono Deola
che lavora soltanto la sera, con lente conquiste
nella musica del suo locale. Gettando le occhiate
a un cliente o cercandogli il piede, le piaccion le orchestre
con un giovane ricco. Le basta un cliente
ogni sera e ha da vivere. (Forse il signore di ieri
mi portava davvero con sé.) Stare sola, se vuole,
al mattino, e sedersi al caffè. Non cercare nessuno.

First published in Lavorare Stanca, 1942, having been censored from the 1936 edition

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southern seas title image

WE'RE WALKING OUT ONE EVENING ON A PIEDMONT HILLSIDE,
saying nothing. In the shadows of the sunset
my cousin is a Titan dressed in white,
his face deep bronze, intrepid in his step,
taciturnity writ large. Keeping mum's our forte.
Some long-lost ancestor must have been a loner –
a great man amidst fools, or else quite mad –
to have handed down such a talent for silence.

Yet that evening my cousin spoke. He requested
we climb up further: from the hill's summit
one could make out in the still night
the distant bonfire that's Turin: "You're a Torinese."
he said. " ...but you are dead right. Live your life
far from home, accumulate experiences and an off-
shore bank-account, see things others don't,
then, when you return at the age of forty like me,
it's as a total stranger." All this he came out with,
and none in Italian, but in our own slow dialect
which, like the granite of that self-same hill,
is so ingrained two decades of strange idioms
and as many oceans cannot erase it. And he carries on
along the slope with the sheer fixity of gaze
I would notice, as a child, in weary peasants.
Twenty years now the world has been his oyster.
He went away when I was still a babe in arms.
The women soon gave him up for lost. Not long after,
he was spoken of, if at all, as in a fable;
the menfolk, more serious, forgot him utterly.
One winter, my father already in the grave,
a giant postcard of some harbour somewhere
arrived for him, belated greetings for a fruitful harvest,
this big green stamp. It caused quite a stir,
but this by now grown-up child avidly explained
the card came from an island named Tasmania
in the midst of an azurer than azure sea
perilous with sharks. Yes, the Pacific,
south of Australia. And he added how no doubt
our cousin was fishing pearls. Then steamed off the stamp.
Everyone threw in her or his opinion, with the conclusion
that, if he wasn't dead yet, he soon would be.
Then everybody forgot, and time, as always, passed –
O, from when I played the Malaysian pirate
how much of it. And from the last occasion
I went down to swim where I shouldn't have,
or followed a companion up a tree
splintering its branches or outboxed some rival
and for my pains received six of the best
how much life has flown. Other days, other games,
other tangles with rivals more treacherous
than I could've imagined: thoughts and dreams.
The city has taught me fears without number:
a crowd, a street has set me trembling,
at times some look marked in a passer's face.
Behind my eyes still I can feel the mocking glimmer
of streetlamps strung out above the ratrace.

The war once ended, my cousin, as big as ever,
was one of the few to return. And he had money
to burn. Relations whispered, "A year at most,
it'll have been used up and again he'll be off."
Something in my cousin's face showed otherwise.
He bought a village plot, was soon making a go
out of a garage, its single pump complemented
by a blazing frontage and this great big sign
blinding the view as you rounded the curve.
Soon he'd employed a mechanic-cum-cashier,
leaving him free to smoke and do the rounds
of the surrounding villages. Meanwhile
he'd married some slim and foreign-looking blonde
whom, likely as not, he had met on his travels.
Yet he still went out alone. Dressed in white,
hands behind his back, bronzed face to the wind,
he'd frequent the fairs and with a furtive air
buy up horses. Later, when it came to nothing,
he explained how his plan had been to clear
the valley of its beasts and force its people
to get themselves a motor vehicle instead.
"Except the biggest beast of all," he said,
"was me to think up the idea to begin with,
beasts and humans in these parts being one of a kind."
We walked half an hour more. From the summit nearby
the wind whistled and rustled. All of a sudden
my cousin halted and, turning, resumed: "This year
I'm writing on my poster: – Our Saint Stephen
has always taken first place in the feasts
of Belbo Valley – let the people of the next village
take note." And again he strides off upwards.
A scent of earth envelops us in the darkness;
the distance flickers with farmhouses, cars you can hardly
hear; and I reflect on what quirk of gravity
has brought me the man back, snatching him from the sea;
I think of distant lands, the silence's long reach.
My cousin isn't your average narrator of journeys.
Dryly he mentions having been in this place or that,
then steers things back to his motors.
                                         Except like a dream
something has remained inside his blood: once upon a time
he took a voyage as stoker on board an old Dutch whaler,
witnessed the weighty harpoons flash in the sunlight,
watched whales take flight amidst the foam of their own gore,
raising their tails as sailors with spears gave chase.
Or so I piece his hints together.
                                  But when I mention
how he's among the lucky ones to have seen dawn
come up above the most beautiful islands on earth,
he grins at the memory and replies that, yes, the sun
rose alright but for folks downunder it was old hat.

First published in Modern Poetry in Translation 15, 1999

I mari del sud title image

CAMMINIAMO UNA SERA SUL FIANCO DI UN COLLE,
in silenzio. Nell'ombra del tardo crepusculo
mio cugino è un gigante vestito di bianco,
che si muove pacato, abbronzato nel volto,
taciturno. Tacere e la nostra virtù.
Qualche nostro antenato dev'essere stato ben solo
- un grand'uomo tra idioti o un povero folle -
per insegnare ai suoi tanto silenzio.

Mio cugino ha parlato stasera. Mi ha chiesto
se salivo con lui: dalla vetta si scorge
nelle notti sereni il riflesso del faro
lontano, di Torino. "Tu che abiti a Torino ..."
mi ha detto " ...ma hai ragione. "La vita va vissuta
lontano dal paese: si profitta e si gode
e poi, quando si torna, come me a quarant'anni,
si trova tutto nuovo. Le Langhe non si perdono."
Tutto questo mi ha detto e non parla italiano,
ma adopera lento il dialetto, che, come le pietre
di questo stesso colle, e scabro tanto
che vent'anni di idiomi e di oceani diversi
non gliel'hanno scalfito. E cammina per l'erta
con lo sguardo raccolto che ho visto, bambino,
usare ai contadini un poco stanchi.
Vent'anni è stato in giro per il mondo.
Se n'ando ch'io ero ancora un bambino portato da donne
e lo dissero morto. Senti poi parlarne
da donne, come in favola, talvolta;
ma gli uomini, piu gravi, lo scordarono.
Un inverno a mio padre già morto arrivo un cartoncino
con un gran francobollo verdastro di navi in porto
e auguri di buono vendemmia. Fu un grande stupore,
ma il bambino cresciuto spiego avidamente
che il biglietto veniva da un'isola detta Tasmania
circondata da un mare più azzurro, feroce di squali;
nel Pacifico, a sud dell'Australia. E aggiunse che certo
il cugino pescava le perle. E stacco il francobollo.
Tutti diedero un loro parere, ma tutti conclusero
che, se non era morto, morirebbe.
Poi scordarono tutti e passo molto tempo.
Oh, da quando ho giocato ai pirati malesi,
quanto tempo è trascorso. E dall'ultima volta
che son sceso a bagnarmi in un punto mortale
e ho seguito un compagno di giochi su un albero
spaccandone i bei rami e ho rotta la testa
a un rivale e son stato picchiato,
quanta vita è trascorsa. Altri giorni, altri giochi,
altri squassi del sangue dinanzi a rivali
piu elusivi: i pensieri e i sogni.
La città mi ha insegnato infinite paure:
una folla, una strada mi han fatto tremare,
un pensiero talvolta, spiato su un viso.
Sento ancora negli occhi la luce beffarda
dei lamponi a migliaia sul gran scalpiccio.

Mio cugino è tornato, finita la guerra,
gigantesco, tra i pochi. E aveva denaro.
I parenti dicevano piano: "Fra un anno, a dir molto,
se li e mangiati tutti e torna in giro.
I disperati muoiono cosi."
Mio cugino ha una faccia recisa. Compro un pianterreno
nel paese e ci fece riuscire un garage di cemento
con dinanzi fiammante la pila per dar la benzina
e sul ponte ben grossa alla curva una targa-reclame.
Poi ci mise un meccanico dentro a ricevere i soldi
e lui girò tutte le Langhe fumando.
S'era intanto sposato, in paese. Pigliò una ragazza
esile e bionda come le straniere
che aveva certo un giorno incontrato nel mondo.
Ma uscì ancora da solo. Vestito di bianco,
con le mani alla schiena e il volto abbronzato,
al mattino batteva le fiere e con aria sorniona
contrattava i cavalli. Spiegò poi a me,
quando falli il disegno, che il suo piano
era stato di togliere tutte le bestie alla valle
e obbligare la gente a comprargli i motori.
"Ma la bestia" diceva "più grossa di tutte,
sono stato io a pensarlo. Dovevo sapere
che qui buoi e persone son tutta una razza".
Camminiamo da più di mezz'ora. La vetta è vicina,
sempre aumenta d'intorno il frusciare e il fischiare del vento.
Mio cugino si fermò d'un tratto e si volge: "Quest'anno
scrivo sul manifesto:- Santo Stefano
è sempre stato il primo nelle feste
della valle del Belbo – e che la dicano
quei di Canelli." Poi riprende l'erta.
Un profumo di terra e di vento ci avvolge nel buio,
qualche lume in distanza: cascine, automobili
che si sentono appena; e io penso all forza
che mi ha reso quest'uomo, strappandolo al mare,
alle terre lontane, al silenzio che dura.
Mio cugino non parla dei viaggi compiuti.
Dice asciutto che è stato in quel luogo in quell'altro
e pensa ai suoi motori.
                               Solo un sogno
gli è rimasto nel sangue: ha incrociato una volta
da fuochista su un legno olandese da pesca, il cetaceo,
e ha veduto volare i ramponi pesanti nel sole,
ha veduto fuggire balene tra schiume di sangue
e inseguire e innalzarsi le code e lottare alla lancia.
Me ne accenna talvolta.
                       Ma quando gli dico
ch'egli è tra i fortunati che han visto l'aurora
sulle isole più belle della terra,
al ricordo sorride e risponde che il sole
si levava che il giorno era vecchio per loro.

First published in Lavorare Stanca, 1936

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temptress title image
(After Rimbaud)

THE DINING ROOM WAS BROWNLY GRANDIOSE;
Fruit and varnish perfumed the air.
I was downing a plate of Belgian potatoes,
My body dwarfed by an enormous chair.

The clock sounded a minor symphony
On the hour. A rustle on the kitchen stair
And with a sly dishevelled hint at why
The maidservant entered, mane of auburn hair

Tumbling about her shoulders, little finger
To her lips. She cleared the plates, then lingered
So close that my eyes couldn’t help but stray:

How butterflies of desire fluttered and flew,
Her downy cheek touched by the sun’s last ray,
Her décolletage a dream come true ...

First published in Modern Poetry in Translation, 3rd Series, Number 4, 2005

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ode title image
(After Valéry Larbaud)

O LUXURY EXPRESS, LEND ME YOUR SHEER ALLURE,
The way you have of slipping through the twinkling European night,
Your glorious uproarious din; then throw in the scarum music
Which thunders along your corridors of gilded leather
While behind lacquered doors with copper locks
Millionaires lie fast asleep.

Next stop Vienna then Budapest,
I walk up and down your corridors and hum
Mixing my own small voice with your hundred thousand,
O Harmonica-Zug!
Aboard the Great Northern, somewhere between Wirballen and Pskow,
I first tasted life in all it sweetness
As we glided across prairies where shepherds dressed
In filthy sheepskins lolled beneath trees as large as hills
(Eight o’clock of an autumn morning and the lovely cancan dancer
With violet eyes was singing in the next compartment.)

From whose windows I’ve watched Siberia and the mountains of
    Samnium flash by,
Seen flowerless bitter-dry Castille and the Sea of Marmara under a
    tepid drizzle,
Lend me, o trains, your repertory of rattles,
Shrieks and whistles only a rain-forest can match,
Orient Express, the Sud-Brenner-Bahn, whatever,
Lend me your ease of motion, your powers of breath,
O locomotive hauling without effort four gold-lettered wagons
Through the mountainous wastes of Serbia,
Across Bulgaria full of roses stretched out beyond ...
All that noise and movement, may it enter my poems,
And express what mere biography cannot,
The flux of things greater than any knowledge,
This life that comes and goes ...

First published in Cyphers, Eire

ode title image
Valéry Larbaud

PRETE-MOI TON GRAND BRUIT, TA GRANDE ALLURE SI DOUCE,
Ton glissement nocturne à travers l’Europe illuminée,
O train de luxe! et l’angoissant musique
Qui bruit le long de tes couloirs de cuir doré,
Tandis que derrière les portes laquées, aux loquets de cuivre lourd,
Dorment les millionnaires.

Je parcours en chantonnant tes couloirs
Et je suis ta course vers Vienne et Budapest,
Mêlant ma voix à tes cent mille voix,
O Harmonika-Zug!
J’ai senti pour la première fois toute la douceur de vivre,
Dans une cabine du Nord-Express, entre Wirballen et Pskow,
On glissait à travers les prairies ou des bergers,
Au pied de groupes de grands arbres pareils à des collines,
Etaient vêtus de peaux de moutons crues et sales ....
(Huit heures du matin en automne, et la belle cancatrice
Aux yeux violets chantait dans la cabine à coté.)

Et vous, grandes glaces à travers lesquelles j’ai vu passer la
     Siberie et les Monts du Samnium,
La Castille âpre et sans fleurs, et la mer de Marmara sous une pluie tiède!
Prêtez-moi, o Orient-Expres, Sud-Brenner-Bahn, prêtez-moi
Vos miraculeux bruits sourds et
Vos vibrantes voix de chanterelle,
Prêtez-moi, la respiration légère et facile
Des locomotives hautes et minces, aux mouvements
Si aisés, des locomotives des rapides,
Précédant sans effort quatre wagons jaunes à lettres d’or
Dans les solitudes montagnardes de la Serbie,
Et, plus loin, à travers la Bulgarie pleine de roses ...
Ah! il faut que ces bruits et ce mouvement
Entrent dans mes poèmes et disent
Pour moi ma vie indicible, ma vie
D’enfant qui ne veut rien savoir, sinon
Esperer éternellement des choses vagues.

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the world's hub title image
(After Pier Paolo Pasolini)

POOR AS A COLISEUM CAT
I lived in an outer suburb with no landmarks
but lime and filth, neither countryside

nor city; that, or was daily packed tight
inside a rattling bus:
and each trip out, each trip back

was a Calvary of hassle and sweat.
Long treks through a miasma of heat
towards even longer dusks

crouched over cards, the road outside
more mud than street, hovels white with dust,
curtains for doors, not a fitting in sight.

And coming from some other suburb
much like this one, an olive-vendor
then the rag-and-bone man ventured past

with goods fallen from the back of a van,
his young face already aged through vices
inculcated by a starving mother ...

And something within me took root,
at once mine yet not mine,
nourished by the happiness of one

who loves, even if he's not loved back.
And everything was lit up by this love,
however mawkish, despite all odds,

growing up, experience's graduate,
at history's callused feet.
I was at the world's hub, of all places

here amidst this sad shanty,
these yellow meadows rubbed bald
by the relentless wind,

be it from the warm sea off Fiumicino
or the inland plain where a metropolis vanishes
into hovels: in this world

over which with row upon row
of small barred windows, the Penitentiary
alone holds sway, a cubist spectre

looming amidst the yellowish smog –
stunted houses and what once
were fields cowering below.

Dustclouds, a myriad scraps
gusts hauled blindly to and fro;
the poor echo-less voices

of the squat women come from
across the Adriatic then over the Sabine mountains
and now camped out here with a swarm

of precociously hard children
in gaudy tattered singlets,
grey and fourth-hand shorts;

African-type suns, fits of rain
turning the streets into mudslides;
those buses on their last wheels or less,

their final terminus
between some pale strips of grass
and an acidic smouldering rubbish tip ...

it was the world's hub,
however unlikely; at the hub of history
my love for it: and in this

realisation which in order to survive
or flourish was still love, everything was
about to become clear – was, yes,

clear! This ghetto unshielded from the wind,
not Roman, not southern,
not even strictly working class,

it was life as it is lived:
life, and light of life, full to bursting,
not yet pigeonholed 'proletarian.'

First published in Modern Poetry in Translation 15, 1999

il centro mondo title image
Pier Paulo Pasolini

POVERO COME UN GATTO DEL COLOSSEO
viveva in una borgata tutta calce
e polverone, lontana dalla citta

e dalla campagna, stretto ogni giorno
in un autobus rantolante:
e ogni andata, ogni ritorno,

era un calvario di sudore e di ansie.
Lunghe camminate in una calda caligine,
lunghi crepuscoli davanti alle carte

ammucchiate sul tavolo, tra strade di fango,
muriccioli, casette bagnate di calce
e senza infissi, con tende per porte.

Passavano l'olivaio, lo straccivendolo,
venendo da qualche altra borgata,
con l'impolverata merce che pareva

frutto di furto, e una faccia crudele
di giovani invecchiati tra i vizi
di chi ha un madre dura e affamata ...

Un'anima in me, che non era solo mia,
una piccola anima in quel mondo sconfinato,
cresceva, nutrita dall'allegria

di chi amava, anche se non riamato.
E tutto si illuminava, a questo amore
forse ancora di ragazzo, eroicamente,

è pero maturato dell'esperienza
che nasceva ai piedi della storia.
Ero al centro del mondo, in quel mondo

di borgate tristi, beduine,
di gialle praterie sfregate
da un vento sempre senza pace,

venisse dal caldo mare di Fiumicino,
a dall'agro, dove si perdeva
la citta fra i tuguri; in quel mondo

che poteva soltanto dominare,
quadrato spettro giallognolo
nella giallognola foschia,

bucato da mille file uguali
di finestre sbarrate, il Penitenzario
tra vecchi campi – sopiti casali.

Le cartacce e la polvere che cieco
il venticello trascinava qua e là,
la polvere voci senza eco

di donnette venute dai monti
Sabini, dall'Adriatico, e qua
accampate, ormai con torme

di deperiti e duri ragazzini,
stridenti nelle canottiere a pezzi,
nei grigi, bruciati calzoncini,

i soli africani, le piogge agitate
che rendevano torrenti di fango
le strade, gli autobus ai capolinea

affondati nel loro angolo
tra un'ultima striscia d'erba bianca
e qualche acido, ardente immondezzaio ...

era il centro del mondo, com'era
al centro della storia il mio amore
per esso: in questa

maturità che per essere nascente
era ancora amore, tutto era
per divenire chiaro – era,

chiaro! Quel borgo nudo al vento,
non romano, non meridionale,
non operaio, era la vita

nella sua luce più attuale:
vita, e luce della vita, piena
nel caos non ancora proletario ...

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