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When I went back to my town in the South by Vittorio Bodini

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When I went back to my town in the South

 where everything, every moment of the past 

resembles those terrible wrists of the dead 

which keep pushing up through the clods of earth 

and wear out the ever-busy spades

 I understood then why I had to lose you :

this is where my face was made, far from you,

and yours, in other countries I cannot even think of

When I went back to my town in the South

 I felt like dying.

(Translation by Susan Perry)

From Foglie di tabacco (1945-47), in La luna dei Borboni (1952)

Edited by Antonio Mangione

© BESA EDITRICE Nardò (Lecce)

Ceglie Messapica. An alley in the old town. Photo Archivio Fotogramma

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