Birthplace
Dream of a summer day.
Limitless cicadas
trilled and quivered.
Wind from the north
whipped crumpled leaves
through a line of trees.
Sun fell between elms
in strips of dust:
From the sky, two clouds
hung threadbare:
white brushed
across wide blue air.
Tamarisk shrubs,
pomegranate trees, the far
throb of a threshing machine
and the silvery swell
of the evening call to prayer. . .
Where was I? The bell
for the prayer said where,
in tears, while a dog
bayed at a stranger
who walked by, head bowed.
_________________
Giovanni Pascoli
Selected Poems
translated by Taije Silverman with
Marina Della Putta Johnston
Princeton 2019
Tell me you don't have the outdoors circulating through you
