V
Two languages, two lands, perhaps two souls?
I dare not ask these flowers I know well,
each of them making its one calyx bright.
Nor can I question that forbidding oak:
though low and long, its roots
cease at the hindrance of the nearest brook
as if abhorring alienness of ground.
Then, who will solve this riddle of my day?
Two languages, two lands, perhaps two souls...
Am I a man or two strange halves of one?
Somber, indifferent light,
setting before me with a sneer of glow,
because there is no answer to my plight
I find some solace only in this thought -
that maybe just as this revolving earth
must not proclaim your triumph all at once,
I too must be, while waiting for my dawn,
the night of my own self.
Or maybe, just as your unbridled flame
would, undivided, scald this hemisphere
and turn it into ashes, I fulfill
my human fate by giving you, O sun,
a chance of mercy on my helpless life.
1976 (da
Gente Mia
and Other Poems)
