--- C E S A R E   P A V E S E

	translated by Susan Thomas

The return—

     In the silence of enormous eyes
I follow on the pavement—
my sad thought, a phantom almost,
sends me reeling in its presence.

     The trampling of the throng
has passed and faded here
but we're wound up so tight
we tear ourselves to pieces in the night streets
we are finally worn out
in the frightening clarity
of asphalt streets.
     So many people—so many eyes
light up the public squares—
so many slow, slack, sluggish faces
have trampled the spirit there.

     I see this in the anguish
of my inscrutable face
reflected in green-tinted shop windows.
     And in the thought that all these limbs
will one day writhe in torment.

     Now the dragnet passes
under enormous eyes, from every side,
that dimmed the sky in their silence.
     And again I have this roar inside me
of the immense fall into death.