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

respect to the persisting inventory of relics

sifted by the memory of the poet.

It is no longer a question of changing the

world, but to know it and accept it for what

it’s worth, certain that everything always

starts from the beginning once again with

every death or change. The agony is

repeated, but so are the small joys of the day,

the discoveries, the starts, sensual and

wasteful love (Erotiche) like the kind that is

a flame of the spirit and does not need to be

consummated to be enjoyed, but lives in the

beguiling power of longing: hope and desire,

charm and consolation, beginning and

waiting. Love that continually risks the

contact, contamination with death, and is a

sign of life, satisfying and comforta-ble,

miraculous in the alternation of sensations

and thoughts it generates (“You can kill me

and I will be reborn, / you can give me life