Street In Agrigentum

There is still the wind that I remember firing the manes of horses, racing, slanting, across the plains, the wind that stains and scours the sandstone, and the heart of gloomy columns, telamons, overthrown in the grass. Spirit of the ancients, grey with rancour, return on the wind, breathe in that feather-light moss that covers those giants, hurled down by heaven. How alone in the space that’s still yours! And greater, your pain, if you hear, once more, the sound that moves, far off, towards the sea, where Hesperus streaks the sky with morning: the jew’s-harp vibrates in the waggoner’s mouth as he climbs the hill of moonlight, slow, in the murmur of Saracen olive trees.