There a wind endures that I remember
Burning in the manes of horses, slanting
In the races across the plains, a wind
That stains the sandstone, wears away the heart
Of mournful columns, thrown down on the grass.
Antique soul, grey with rancour, you go back to join
that wind, breathing the delicate moss
Covering the giants who have fallen from heaven.
How solitary you are
within the space still left you! And all the more
you grieve to hear the sound that moves far off,
a breadth of sound that moves towards the sea
where Hesperus already touches dawn:
a mouth-organ now quivers at the lips
of the waggoner as he climbs
up the hill made clean by the moon,
slowly among the murmuring Saracen olives.
—Salvatore Quasimodo, The Road to Agrigentum. Translated by Anthony Thwaite
