Translated from the Italian by Angela D’Ambra  

You left without a noise, a rustle, nothing

When you knocked
I sought into your eyes
which fright had brought you
all this way, and which dawn they had on,
if the sun they loved, or the billows that the meadows veil

your heart I weighed, the way one can do it
in the chest’s hideout, in the sealed cell
of shadow: there was no smack of stones,
still, unsure, there was a wind
that the woodwork forced.

You stepped in: I gave you clean clothes
bread and fruit. We had supper.

Throughout your staying, we talked
of the parched paths of Mount Lera
(you too loathed wide roads)
or of the jays’ meowing
of the tongue of brooks and streams.

You left without a noise, a rustle, nothing.
One day, or a year later.

Here ’twas still dawn
and outer the hours flowed backwards
coming back at night.

Which queries shall you offer
the new woods.

__

Without bragging, go on

Without bragging, go on, and without
dread, a presence with too many
eyes shall walk close,
a clash of war
the uproar of storm
the bells, the song, the silence.

I don’t understand whose hand is the one
carrying me, and that I follow.

__

The Omen

Thus you come
through the painful lawn

the prophet squatted on the moss of the rock
blood with ethyl dilutes

distressed by a milky sky
incensed even by the crow

the followers came down to the valley
along the road by asphalt inhumed

Is to see for oneself only a sort of blindness?
decay awaits: it has a settled date

an hour already marked.
Will oblivion
obliterate the omen?

__