from "Roman Poems" by Pier Paolo Pasolini

The Lament of the Excavator

I.

It is only loving, only knowing that matters,
not having loved, not having known.
To live for a past love

makes for agony. The soul
doesn't grow any more.
Here, in the enchanted heat of the night

in its depth down here
along the bends of the river with its drowsy
visions of the city strewn with lights

echoing still with a thousand lives,
lacklove, mystery and misery of the senses
make me an enemy of the forms of the world,

which until yesterday were my reason for living.
Bored and weary, I return home,
through dark market places,

sad streets by river docks,
among shacks and warehouses mixed
with the last fields.

There, silence is deadly.
But down along the Viale Marconi,
at Trastevere station, the evening still seems sweet.

To their neighbourhoods, to their suburbs
the young return on light motorbikes --
in overalls and work pants

but spurred on by a festive excitement,
with a friend behind on the saddle,
laughing and dirty. The last customers

stand gossiping loudly
in the night, here and there, at tables
in almost-empty still brightly-lit bars.

Stupendous and miserable city,
you taught me what joyful ferocious men
learn as kids,

the little things in which the greatness
of life is discovered in peace,
how to be tough and ready

in the confusion of the streets,
addressing another man, without trembling,
not ashamed to watch money counted

with lazy fingers by sweaty delivery boys
against facades flashing by
in the eternal color of summer,

to defend myself, to offend,
to have the world before my eyes
and not just in my heart,

to understand that few know the passions
which I've lived through:
they are not brothers to me,

and yet they are true brothers
with passions of men who,
light-hearted, inconscient,

live entire experiences unknown to me.
Stupendous and miserable city,
which made me experience that unknown life

until I discovered what
in each of us
was the world.

A moon dying in the silence that lives on it
pales with a violent glow
which miserably, on the mute earth

with its beautiful boulevards and old lanes,
dazzles them without shedding light,
and a few hot cloud masses

reflect them over the world.
It is the most beautiful summer night.
Trastevere, smelling of straw

from old stables and half-empty wine bars,
isn't asleep yet.
The dark corners and peaceful walls

echo with enchanted noise.
Men and boys returning home
under festoons of lonely lights,

toward their alleys choked with darkness and garbage,
with that soft step
which struck my soul

when I really loved,
when I really longed to understand.
And now as then, they disappear, singing.