Carlo Betocchi

And it grows, the vain summer, even for us with our bright green sins: behold the dry guest, the wind, as it stirs up quarrels among magnolia boughs and plays its serene tune on the prows of all the leaves— and then is gone, leaving the leaves still there, the tree still green, but breaking the heart of the air.

One spring day I saw the shadow of a strawberry tree lying on the moor like a shy lamb asleep. Its heart was far away, suspended in the sky, brown in a brown veil, in the sun’s eye. The shadow played in the wind, moving there alone to make the tree content. Here and there it shone. It knew no pain, no haste, wanting only to feel morning, then noon, then the slow-paced journey of evening. Among all the shadows always joining eternal shadow, shrouding the earth in falseness, I loved this steady shadow. And thus, at times, it descends among us, this meek semblance, and lies down, as if drained, in grass and in patience.

And then at night, when old, we start having vague pointless scraps of dreams that lead us to this place or that, since even our failing senses insist on outings: and lost friends reappear, sleepwalking through the stupor of surrendered existence. But here too there’s something that’s not unconscious, as when the boatman stops his old ferry along the banks of the Arno, plunges his wooden bailer into the bottom of the boat, and dumps that stale water, gone to grime between the staves, overboard into the river, where it flows again, though the boat is held fast amid the mud and rushes.