Path

It was better if the Town Hall collapsed!

The school bell was torn off by it cleanly

that playing on the roof tiles for a long time,

every morning, you could hear her

in the square and further away,

up to the Rabatana;

now there has disappeared the dust

of the boys who jump and who shout “even and odd”.

(stage n. 1 – via Pietro Giannone, 19)

No one can know what I feel

now that the local festival is over

and I see that the band players, one by one,

dressed in white go by playing

in the empty square and leave

go to another part.

(stage n. 2 – piazza Plebiscito)

Once, in one of the baskets

that the donkey carried

they put me and in that other,

to make them be equal,

they stuff so big stones.

How many laughs I did myself

if the donkey slipped on the stones

smoother than a mirror…

(stage n. 3 – via Garibaldi, 1)

When they killed the pig,

I ran upstairs crying

and played the guitar so as not to hear

those torn cries.

But when I became a little boy,

I would stand straight among the people

and I too, with the sleeves rolled up,

I was so happy to hold its foot and to support myself with my knees

over that pig that was dying

gripped by all those hands.

(stage n. 4 – via Garibaldi, 8)

Now that the new machines have come out

the oil mill has gotten old:

my poor father who had dreamed them so much this winter,

and now he is not there.

In that abyss of darkness

there is a smell of rancid oil

between piles of fiscoli and ropes

that blackened hang from the poles

here and there stuck in the joints / of the walls;

(stage n. 5 – via Garibaldi, 16)

What do you know about it? What do you know

when I climbed up that wall in front of my door of my house?

I would have won the cat

so I went to the top

to uproot the grass from the wall

and to pick the snow in the holes

after it had rained cats and dogs.

(stage n. 6 – via Mazzini, 2)

The Post Office of my country

there had been almost a hundred years

in the palace of Don Peppino:

right there it was born

and there they worked

always dressed in black

those two beautiful ladies.

(stage n. 7 – corso Umberto I, 4)

The night before I left I went up to the balcony above and there I heard the crickets singing

hiding in the black of the mountains.

(stage n. 8 – terrazzo Casa Museo Albino Pierro)

When I see the mountains of my country, my heart weeps.

I am thinking of a series of bolds

who wanted to touch the sky with their finger,

but then, a little today and a little tomorrow,

(stage n. 9 – corso Umberto I, 23)

On Saint Lucia’s day,

when my little eyes were sick,

I threw the little picture out of my pocket and quiet and quiet I went and I kept apart

in the dark to weep and, kneeling like in a church,

I hugged it to the heart and I kissed it.

(stage n. 10 – corso Umberto I, 56)

They are the “Vigliotte”

a little house among the cliffs:

there is a memory,

the first,

of my father.

(stage n. 11 – I Vigghiotte)

To get to the Rabatana

you climb the “pitrizze”

which looks like a ladder leaning against a ruined “timpa”.

(stage n. 12 – inizio ‘Pitrizze’)

I went in the ravines many times,

and how much I like

to lie down in the caves

after I ran

like the hare.

(stage n. 13 – Piccicarello)

Strúffoli (traditional Neapolitan pastries) and zeppole (a sweet Italian pastry similar to a doughnut or churro)

in the dish with the rosettes bread

say another time:

“It’s Christmas”;

(stage n. 14 – chiesa Santa Maria Maggiore)