Giovanni Pascoli

Out of a motionless infernal shudder and clang of steel on steel as wagons moved toward the eternal, a sudden silence: I was healed. The stormcloud of my sickness fled on a breath. A flickering of eyes, and I saw my mother by my bed and gazed at her without surprise. Free! Helpless, yes, to move the hands clasped on my chest—but I had no desire to move. The rustling sounds (like cypress trees, like streams that flow across vast prairies seeking seas that don’t exist) were thin, insistent: I followed after those vain sighs, ever the same, ever more distant.

I stared into the valley: it was gone— wholly submerged! A vast flat sea remained, gray, with no waves, no beaches; all was one. And here and there I noticed, when I strained, the alien clamoring of small, wild voices: birds that had lost their way in that vain land. And high above, the skeletons of beeches, as if suspended, and the reveries of ruins and of the hermit’s hidden reaches. And a dog yelped and yelped, as if in fear, I knew not where nor why. Perhaps he heard strange footsteps, neither far away nor near— echoing footsteps, neither slow nor quick, alternating, eternal. Down I stared, but I saw nothing, no one, looking back. The reveries of ruins asked: “Will no one come?” The skeletons of trees inquired: “And who are you, forever on the go?” I may have seen a shadow then, an errant shadow, bearing a bundle on its head. I saw—and no more saw, in the same instant. All I could hear were the uneasy screeches of the lost birds, the yelping of the stray, and, on that sea that lacked both waves and beaches, the footsteps, neither near nor far away.