Mother, the Evening When You DiedMother, on the evening when you died
a band was playing on in the town square
and I was having fun and did not cry
since to me death seemed really like a song
that the wind carried from the threshing floors,
or on a summer evening you don’t know
because for such a long time you have looked
at the radiant vault of the big sky
that deafens your ears like an empty room
that seems full of cicadas.
That’s why, after you had died, I held you
so tightly in my arms, as in a vice.
Before I had been afraid to kiss you.
And I saw you once again that evening
as you stood guard on top of the Palazzo,
and kept watching from your upper window
the children having fun down in the valley
or that big snowfall once on Christmas day
that like a small bell muffled your frail voice
which was still calling me amid the storm:
Peppe, Peppe....