*Cesare Pavese. I wasn't looking for the guy, I promise. I was just blogging SXSW here and this ultimately melancholy Torino writer showed up on my laptop screen. Moaning about his bridges on the Po.
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=181996
(...)
I know of her what I’ve always known of all girls:
that she works, that she’s sad, and that, if I asked her,
“Do you want to die tonight?” she’d say yes.
(((Great lines, aren't they? Fantastic! Man, that was
this Pavese guy all over!)))
“And our little affair?” “Our affair’s something else,
it’s only for now.” (There’s a boyfriend around.)
Oh beautiful girl, tonight I am not that boy,
audacious, who won you with a kiss on the street
in front of an old man who watched with astonishment.
This evening I walk with the saddest of thoughts,
like when you say that you wish you could die.
Not that I wish I could die. Those days have passed,
and besides, “we aren’t in love.” The crowd passes by,
pressing and crushing, and you too are the crowd,
like everyone else, you’re walking beside me.
Not that I hate you—could you ever believe that?—
but I am alone, and I’ll be alone always.
Here we are at the Po—“It’s lovely—it’s crystal this evening.
Columns of light... the curves of the dock:
it almost looks, in the dark, like the seashore.”
She talks to me happily, holding me:
I should hold her more tightly, here on the bridge.
The distant orchestra has followed us here.
The hills are all dark. “Will you come to the hills?”
“Not to the hills, it’s too far. Let’s stay here and watch...”
