Autumn Journal Autumn Journal

Gingerly the moon moves near the hilltop church and slides around the transept, slow, to peer inside the cloister. No: those are not friars there, but children… outside their nests. She rests against a brim of wind. Their wings are hurt… But lying in ordered rows of narrow beds they’re all asleep, as if they’re tired. Tired from flying, at least in dreams, and so in dreams their mothers hold them close against warm skin. The moon, she listens in. She doesn’t want to wake them, she only wants to see. And then she leaves, but rises high. She needs to make the hilltops gleam, and drape a sheen across the sea, but too she sends a beam back down to where the children sleep. And up she climbs, up through the sky, the high good sky, and searches far and wide to find the stars. Where are the stars? She scans the sky. Where can they be? She wants to tell the faultless virgin stars what she has seen. (translated from the Italian by Taije Silverman and Marina Della Putta Johnston)

Feb 11, 2014 / Books & the Arts / Giovanni Pascoli