#PoetryTakeMeAway

Dawn and night here vary by a few signs.

The zigzag of starlings on the town squares
on days of battle, my only wings,
a thread of polar air,
the watchman's eye through the peephole,
crack of crushed nuts, an oily
sizzle from the quarries, spit-roasts
real or supposed - but straw is gold,
the wine lantern is a hearth
if in my sleep I believe I'm at your feet.

The purge has always lasted without reason.
They say that those who renounce and sign
can save themselves from this slaughter of geese;
that those who obfuscate themselves, but betray
and sell the flesh of others, grab the ladle
rather than ending up in the pâté
destined for the pestilential deities.

Delayed of mind, afflicted
by the stinging bedding I have fused
with the flight of the moth that my sole
grinds on the flooring,
with the shifting kimonos of the lights
unfurled at dawn from the towers,
I have smelled in the wind the burning
of the sweet pastries from the ovens,
I looked around, summoned
irises on horizons of spiderwebs
and petals on the scaffolds of the grills,
I got up, I fell again
to the bottom where the century is the minute

and the blows repeat and the steps,
and still I do not know if I will be at the feast
the filler or the filled. The wait is long,
my dream of you is not finished.

Eugenio Montale "The Dream of the Prisoner"