Noel’s Reviews > Canti > Status Update

Yes, you sleep, while I come to my window
to salute this sky that seems so kind,
and eternal, all-commanding nature
who created me for suffering.
I deny you hope, she told me, even hope;
let your eyes never shine except with tears.
This was a holiday. Tonight you rest
from play, and maybe in your sleep
you dream of all the men you charmed today,
and those who charmed you, too; but I don’t come to mind,
not that I hoped to. So I ask myself what’s left in life for me,
and fall down on the ground and rage, and shake.
Horrific days at such a tender age!
On the road not far from me I hear
the lonely song of the workman, coming late
from his evening out to his poor home,
and my heart is stricken
to think how everything in this world passes and barely leaves a trace. Look,
the holiday is gone, the workday follows,
and time makes off with every human thing.
Where is the clamor of those ancient peoples?
Where is the renown
of our famed ancestors, and the great empire
of their Rome, her armies,
and the din she made on land and sea?
Everything is peace and quiet now,
the world is calm, and speaks no more of them.
In my young years, in the time of life
when we wait impatiently for Sunday,
afterward I’d lie awake unhappy,
and late at night a song heard on the road
dying note by note as it passed by
would pierce my heart
the same way even then.