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

Song of Liberty

Shackle the wind
if you will
or it might tousle your hair
and sweep through your hearths
to release your pain.
Shackle the pain
if you will
somehow appease the world
its pain that ages in hearts
crumbles walls
and snuffs out candles.
Shackle hunger
if you will
somehow shield your haunches ─
but hunger has no limits
pain no modesty
wind no barriers...
Shackle the shadows of night
flitting through the gardens
to hoist banners over the rocks
and, shouting, summon the mothers
who (wide awake)