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

The Peacock

To Miserere
Look at that garden now
at the top of the town.
It’s in ruins.
During the baron’s time
there was a peacock:
on that sunny hillside
he went browsing like a comet,
but if it cried out, Miserè,
he sounded like someone led to slaughter.
The war is over,
a murky dream
I don’t know how to tell:
white and black, green and yellow,
Moroccans and Americans
Protestants and Moslems!...
Was it a war or a carnival?
It was war, Miserè!
But now you have to tell me why, Miserè,
from all that turmoil
only that peacock I remember
on that sunny hillside,