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

Footsteps

Why
does every inch of soil where I put
my feet seem to me not
solid, just as the planks
of the old bridge are never solid?
Why does every step
(both the steps of other people
and my own)
echo in my head and heart
like the footsteps that echo under
the arches of the old bridge?
All I seem to hear
day and night are the footsteps
of furious people,
footsteps of joyless people,
people with hoes on their shoulders,
footsteps of old people with one foot in the grave
who go shuffling along,
to expend their last breath
for their last mouthful of bread;
footsteps of drowsy
children, footsteps