Wild Dreams: The Best of Italian Americana

Cento at Dawn

104 cento at dawn Cento at Dawn Daniela Gioseffi (1995) The wind blows out of the gates of the day. Let the night keep what the night takes away, dreamt in a dream the heavy soul, somewhere struck suddenly and dark down to its knees, sighs as a griffon sighs off in the orphic air— awakes as morning at the brown brink eastward springs and the whole landscape flushes on a sudden at a sound— the clang of waking life; the streets are stirred, birds fly to the glistening roofs and sing; an omnibus across the bridge crawls like a yellow butterfly, while I stand on the roadway and on the pavement grey and dream that beauty passes like a dream fastened to a dying animal. Cento is an Italian form of verse in which lines and refrains from poets of the past are deliberately used and combined into a new poem. ...