The Drunk Old Woman

Even the old woman likes to lie in the sun

and stretch out her arms. The heat weighs her down,

pressing her small face as it presses the earth.

Of things that burned, only the sun remains.

Men and wine have betrayed her, have consumed

the dark bones in her dress. But the cracked earth

hums like a flame. No call for words now,

no call for regrets. The shimmering day will return

when her young body burned like the sun.

The great hills reappear in her memory,

young and alive, like her body. The look of a man

or the sharp taste of wine can bring back

desire’s tension: a heat hums in her blood

like greenness in grass. Among vineyards and paths

memory becomes flesh. The woman lies still,

eyes closed, enjoying the sky with the body she had.

Beating beneath the cracked earth is a healthier heart,

like a father’s strong chest, like the chest of a man:

she presses a wizened cheek to the ground. Even fathers,

even men, are betrayed when they die. Their flesh,

like hers, is consumed. Neither warm thighs

nor the sharp taste of wine will arouse these men now.

In the sprawling vineyards, the sharp, sweet voice

of the sun whispers through the diaphanous blaze,

as if the air trembled. Grass trembles around her.

The grass is young still, like the heat of the sun.

The dead are young too, while memories live. 

                                                                              

--Cesare Pavese

Translated by Geoffrey Brock