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John William Tuohy lives in Washington DC

Cesare Pavese




Cesare Pavese was an Italian novelist, poet, short story writer, translator, and literary critic. Just before the start of World War Two, Pavese took an antifascist stance, dangerous in the time of Mussolini and Hitler. Predictably, he was arrested and convicted for having letters from a political prisoner. He was tossed into a cell for several months and then sent into internal exile in Southern Italy. He returned to Turin about a year later and worked for the left-wing publisher Giulio Einaudi as editor and translator. When the Nazi’s arrived, he took to the hills with partisans, although he didn’t fight due to severe asthma.
 After the war, Pavese joined the Italian Communist Party and worked on the party's newspaper, L'Unità and at the same time turned to writing. In 1950 he won the Strega Prize for La Bella Estate, comprising three novellas: 'La tenda', written in 1940, 'Il diavolo sulle colline' (1948) and 'Tra donne sole' (1949). His last book was 'La Luna e i Falò', published in Italy in 1950 and translated into English as The Moon and the Bonfires by Louise Sinclair in 1952. Struck by chronic depression and a failed love affair with the actress Constance Dowling, he committed suicide by an overdose of barbiturates

Creation


I’m alive and at daybreak I’ve startled the stars.
My companion continues to sleep unaware.
All companions are sleeping. The day is a clear one
and stands sharper before me than faces in water.

In the distance an old man is walking to work
or enjoying the morning. We aren’t so different,
we both breathe the same faint glimmer of light
as we casually smoke, beguiling our hunger.
The old man, too, must have a body that’s pure
and vital—he ought to stand naked facing the morning.

Life this morning flows out over water
and in sunlight: around us the innocent splendor
of water, and all the bodies will soon be uncovered.
There’ll be a bright sun and the sharpness of sea air
and the harsh exhaustion that beats down in sunlight
and stillness. And my companion will be here—
a shared secret of bodies, each with its own voice.

There’s no voice to break the silence of water
at dawn. And neither is anything moving
beneath this sky. There’s only a star-melting warmth.
One shudders to feel the morning trembling
so virginally, as if none of us here were awake.