Dialect Poetry of Southern Italy (Italian Poetry in Translation Book 2)

Not a Blade of Grass Is Stirring

You were jazz music, Azzola, swing
and rock,
breathlessness of night
and daylight longing,
laughter of the wellspring
gushing over pebbles to the shore
of San Marco d’Alunzio,
stardust
lashing like the southwest wind
through a canebrake of troubles,
the nasal twang
of a pious churchgoer saying rosaries
and litanies before the chapel
of the Child of Prague,
a rough cloth
torn bit by bit,
yelping
of pups,
slithering groan
of the mistral against the oak tree,
and the crash
of snapping brushwood, drunken