LABORER, RAGPICKER
 

Laborer, ragpicker
blast-furnace worker,
fisherman,
illegal seller of shell-fish.
That was
my old man-
a sun-worshipper, a lover
of shoals,
a silent
fanatic of the sea.
He didn't talk much
to anybody,
was an illiterate
who believed simply in life
and its disquieting
thrall
from the first sign of dawn
to sunset
That's the way my father
was inside
in this murky world
asking nothing from nobody.
Last night he went down to deep
time,
into the big skies that had watched over him
hour by hour,
into the incandescent and loving universes,
with a stiff secrecy
I'm not sad
I'm happy
content
hearing him impetuosly
inside everything
now
with his song from our dark, windowless
kitchen.
His song that was more than a song
was a
cry, a wild, dense
howl
that I toss back with all
the power of the wounds
of a love in tatters
against those hours when
the bosses were hungry for our blood
our hauls
against the heavy bars of marginalization
against the forests of a sorrow
and a loneliness without end. 

Traduzione di Jack Hirschmann