#PoetryTakeMeAway

Often, to return to my home,
I take a dark street of the old city.
Yellow in some puddle reflects
a lamp, and the street is crowded.

Here among the people coming and going
from the tavern to the house or to the brothel
where there are goods and men the detritus
of a great seaport,
I find, passing by, the infinite
in humility.
Here, a prostitute and a sailor, the old man
who curses, the woman who bickers,
the dragon sitting at the fryer’s shop.
The tumultuous young girl driven
mad
by love,
they are all creatures of life
and of pain;
stirring within them, as in me, is the Lord.

Here among the humble, I sense in company
my thought becoming
purer where the path is most vile.

Umberto Saba, Città Vecchia