Franco Fortini
Translated by Erminia Passannanti
'The nest'
Mid-March and between the wall and the roof
some birds with yellow hostile beaks
nervous and miserable make their nest of twigs.
When it is deepest night and I cannot sleep
I know that their newborn are behind the wall.
In
were embossed in friezes of eagles and gold.
From profound theatres valiant men
now sing. A humming splits the night.
Proud voices invoke Miserere.
Inside the nest ignorant creatures
will shiver at their mother's frenzy.
Hunger will shriek, the mother
will teach them all there is to know.
In the ghastly air they will finally fly
and nothing more than this will learn.
Illusion has emptied the scenes.
Minute populations have burned alive in the diodes.
I say to my pious mind - Gather your broken limbs
in this patient ship. Let the body look like
one whole dormant being.
But already so many are on their ways
in the greyness of the first light
where the massacre vacillates between ditches
and waste spaces, so many already offer their necks.
This is the law. This is what can be understood.
Neighbours, my neighbours, stay asleep in your blood.
This unspoken destiny which can be understood
Little by little grows clearer in the room.
Waiting for those little ones to wake,
a juvenile form of my consciousness watches
the body all enclosed in his repose.
(Poesie Scelte, pp. 85-87, Translation Erminia Passannanti)
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