Who do we sing for?
and you Malacarne still hunt
barefoot down the ditches
in the wheat?... but who is calling us?
When it gets dark the mothers all begin
to call their children in
and voice upon voice it’s all a calling
from the balconies, from below...
who’ll ever know that year how many of us there were..
Even now the wind’s falling:
deserted night moon without a thing
peeled onion of a moon,
who knows how many of us there were...you go
it isn’t worth it, don’t ask
it’s not the time, you must accept it
with lines around your eyes and then the tremor
and the gray, it isn’t worth it.
Go...
(Translated by Luigi Bonaffini)
