Myth
One day will come when the young god will be man,
griefless, with the dead smile of man
when he has understood. Even the sun passes, remote,
reddening beaches. One day will come when the god
will not know anymore where the beaches of once were.
You get up one day and summer has died
and splendours still light tumultuous your eyes
as yesterday, in your ears still the clamour of sun
made blood. The colour of the world has mutated.
The mountain does not touch the sky anymore, the clouds,
don’t heap up like fruits; in the water
not one single cobble shines through. The body of a man
thoughtfully bends, where a god used to breathe.
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The big sun is over, and the scent of earth
and the free street, coloured of folks
who ignored death [1]. None can die in the summer.
If someone disappeared, the young god was there
who lived for everybody and ignored death.
Like a cloud shadow was sadness to him.
His gait astonished the earth.
Now burdens
tiredness on all the man’s limbs:
without grief: the calm tiredness of dawn
that opens a day of rain. The obscured beaches
do not know the young man, whose stare once was enough
over them. Neither the sea revives
breathing. The man’s lips bend
resigned, to smile facing the earth.
[1] In the Italian original, death can be said to be ignored by the colorful people as well as by the free street, due to concordance ambiguity.
Originally published at http://eliomarpa.wordpress.com on October 30, 2016.
Working Wearies, a retranslation of Pavese’s Lavorare Stanca, is available on Amazon here
