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

An Hour Transpires

If this hour, transpiring
stings me ─ lachrymose ─
I suffuse with time’s dew.
If a voice crosses
these bitter
flower-barren spaces
my moon laughs
decks me white.
In zig-zags of shadows
night air
far off
ripples of grass
I bear the tufts of
some incongruent habit ─
in silhouette.
(1947)
(Translated by by Justin Vitiello)