A Relocation

^{translated from the Italian by Peter Covino}

I dreamt of a move (which one? the reader will ask,
the worst habit is to put oneself in his place,
ignoring the reasons of the heart) as if it were
the last day of a deluded and ferocious life;
the last day we still have the limitless
and irresistible strength to say to who passes:
“Come up, let’s meet!” Tender, tender
sickly infancy that returns! And I have too much
fear of the future to live only in the past:
to forget the eternal moments in a house
where in the sacred mystery of poetry I complete
my definitive incarnation, the extreme journey
to the life after; while from there
beyond the Sixtus Bridge and the sultry sky
a house unknown to me gleams, without a lease,
a tatter of a lawless contract; a passport
for an imminent but refused rebirth.
Better to have remained like this; to fall asleep
slowly in the funerary wake of a habitual furnace
below which my frail lungs were poisoned,
requiring regular getaways toward the beloved South:
the Calabrias, Sicilys, Lucanias, Pantellerias.
The horror of life is to decide, to change,
to get used to the best which is the worst for those
no longer young, traveler of shadows moving
in the wrong gear.