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

Among People Laughing

Among people laughing,
the day you disappeared,
I was hiding like a blade of straw
in the twisted wheel
of a charred wagon
at the bottom of a cliff.
Above, instead of people,
it was the the smoke that brawled
like a cloud
amid the blows of the wind;
and the poisonous breath of a fire
was already melting the gold
of the sun in those cold
flashes of crystal,
of happy laughter snapping
like a battery of firecrackers
and pealings of bells.
It must be a thousand years
I’ve felt this way:
in the earthquake of a train
that never nears
but eternally hurtles over me