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   u n t i t l e d    (m a r c h    3 0,    1 9 2 9)

--- 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.

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