South is my love, they are the ploughmen,
in the shade of the oak trees or on the farmyards,
they sleep tied to halters of the bay mares.
Their faces are burnt a crust of bread.

And women climb slopes
they hold their children in the wind,
they go looking full of dismay the man who may not return.

South is children crying
in the mouths of abandoned alleys.
Music is cynical laughter of the spy owl of every house.v Therefore on big celebrations
let’s make the columns behind the saints,
we pray for water and for the sun,
we have the skin of the damned when gifts are denied to us.

South is condemned love:
horse fly tickles us,
we get the scent of nettles
when the rain is touched by the sun.
South is my strangest love:
the beautiful peasant girl among the flowers that you can beat her.

South is the song of the beginnings,
the fingers move
on the network of memories.

And south is my grandfather
my father and my mother
and south is the New York soldier
who walks around with his helmet on his shoulders,
he is a dull son in his native home,
and I’m south too that I sing the litany…


(from Il Meridione, 1 May 1951)

Read by Nicole

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