The best poems by Cesare Pavese

Writer, poet, essayist and translator, born wednesday september 9, 1908 in Santo Stefano Belbo, Cuneo (Italy), died sunday august 27, 1950 in Turin (Italy)
You can find this author also in Quotes & Aphorisms.

Posted by: Marilů Rossi
When death comes, it will have your eyes-
This death that is always with us,
From morning till evening, sleepless,
Deaf, like an old remorse
Or some senseless bad habit. Your eyes
Will be a pointless word,
A stifled scream, a silence;
The way they appear to you each morning,
When you lean over, alone,
Into the mirror. Sweet hope,
That day we too shall know
That you are life and you are nothingness.
For each of us, death has a face.
When death comes, it will have your eyes.
It will be like quitting some bad habit,
Like seeing a dead face
Resurface out of the mirror,
Like listening to shut lips.
We'll go down into the vortex in silence.
Cesare Pavese
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    Posted by: Rita Cangiano
    I'll wander the streets till I'm dead tired,
    I'll learn to live alone and look each passing face
    straight in the eye and still be what I am.
    This coolness ascending in me, searching through my veins,
    is an awakening each morning that I've never felt
    so real -except that I feel stronger
    than my body, and a colder shiver comes each morning now.
    The mornings I had at twenty are now far: away.
    And tomorrow, twenty-one: tomorrow I'll go out in tile streets.
    I remember every stone, and the layers of the sky.
    From tomorrow people will start seeing me,
    I'll walk straight, and perhaps I'll pause
    to see myself in windows. There were mornings once
    when I was young and didn't know it, didn't even know
    that who was passing by was me - a woman, mistress
    of herself. The scrawny girl I used to be
    was awakened by a weeping that went on for years.
    Now it's as if that grieving never was.
    And all I want are colours. Colours don't weep,
    they're like an awakening: tomorrow colours
    will return. Every woman will go out into the street,
    each body a colour - even the children.
    And this body of mine, dressed after so much paleness
    in a frivolous red, will repossess its life.
    I'll feel glances slide over me
    and I'll know I'm me: a sidelong look
    and I'll see I'm there, among people. Each new morning
    I'll go out into the streets and look for colours.
    Cesare Pavese
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      Posted by: Phantastica
      Dawn's faint breath
      breathes with your mouth
      at the ends of empty streets.
      Gray light your eyes,
      sweet drops of dawn
      on dark hills.
      Your steps and breath
      like the wind of dawn
      smother houses.
      The city shudders,
      Stones exhale--
      you are life, an awakening.
      Star lost
      in the light of dawn,
      trill of the breeze,
      warmth, breath--
      the night is done.
      You are light and morning.
      Cesare Pavese
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