Ode to a Flower in Casarsa

[ERIC SHARP]

Ode to a Flower in Casarsa

by Pier Paolo Pasolini

 

Desert flower, flowers from the garland

of our houses where families

bicker in the open air,

 

you browse on the stones of the day,

simple, while field and sky

like sky and sea

appear all around.

 

Rustic desert flower,

 

no evening streaming with lights.

 

No shepherds drenched by dew,

 

slender fire of the hedges.

 

No marsh-marigold, bilberry, swamp-violet

or Florentine iris, or gentian, no angelica,

no Parnassian grass or marsh-myrtle.

 

You’re Pieruti, Zuan

and tall Bepi with his walking-sticks of bone,

slim at the helm of his wagon,

 

pasture flower.

 

You become hay. Burn, burn,

sun of my town, little desert flower.

 

The years pass over you,

and so do I, with the shadow of the acacia tree,

with the sunflower, on this quiet day.