"The Privilege of Thinking" by Pier Paolo Pasolini, from Roman Poems

Ah, to withdraw into myself and think!
To tell myself, here, now, I'm thinking, sitting
on a seat, by a friendly window.
I can think!
In the miasma of the Piazza Vittorio
the morning burns my eyes, my face,
and the miserable sticky smell of coal
mortifies the thirst of my senses:
a terrible pain weighs down my heart,
so alive again.

Beast dressed as a man,
boy sent around the world alone,
with his coat and his hundred lire,
heroic, ridiculous, I too am going to work
to make a living...A poet, it's true,
but now here I am on this train
sadly loaded with clerks,
as if for a joke, white with weariness,
here I am sweating out of my salary,
dignity of my false youth,
a misery from which with inner humility
and ostentatious roughness
I defend myself...

But I think! I think in a friendly corner,
absorbed for the whole half hour ride,
from San Lorenzo to the Capannelle,
from the Capannelle to the airport,
in my thoughts, looking for infinite lessons,
for one verse only, for a fragment of verse.
What a stupendous morning! Unlike any other!
New threads of thin mist
over the aqueduct banks
covered with houses small as kennels,
and abandoned scattered streets
used only by the poor.
Now an outburst of sun
on fields, grottos, caves,
a natural baroque,
with green laid-on by a stingy Corot.
Now a flash of gold on the tracks
where with their delicious brown rumps
horses run,
ridden by boys who seem even younger
and don't know there's light
in the world all around them.



trans. by Lawrence Ferlinghetti & Francesca Valente