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

A Flower’s Breath

Calyx
white
silence ─
where you grow
pinch by pinch
I feel the dew
that bathed your finger tips
drying...
It is not the wind that pulses
this breath-all-scent
but a love that transpires
slower
more alone
through
a sky vein...
Open wide
you breathe
light and aroma
and I feel within
the birth of a garden
rife with stars.
(1948)