This city will drown me
Without love's voice to breathe
In time with
Herr Hammer's stately city, at best
A hollow shell
At worst
A beast with dust and horns
Second grade inferno.
I shall not stay now no
The festivals are over
The last truant journeys taken
Eyes turning me out
Of this and any city
I shall not stray
In these squares
Once habitual cafés
Linger on the wide stone stairs
Where one lived in the Via Verdi
Pair of Judas eyes
That lit them
Have left them
E partita and the history
will be
Repeated somewhere other than Turin.
The same dog soiled city parks
The same scratching latch keys
The same hatching
In the same indifferent streets
The cumbersome dreams.
These folding streets, these universal streets
Which wind and wind like sheets.
Without love's voice to breathe
In time with
Herr Hammer's stately city, at best
A hollow shell
At worst
A beast with dust and horns
Second grade inferno.
I shall not stay now no
The festivals are over
The last truant journeys taken
Eyes turning me out
Of this and any city
I shall not stray
In these squares
Once habitual cafés
Linger on the wide stone stairs
Where one lived in the Via Verdi
Pair of Judas eyes
That lit them
Have left them
E partita and the history
will be
Repeated somewhere other than Turin.
The same dog soiled city parks
The same scratching latch keys
The same hatching
In the same indifferent streets
The cumbersome dreams.
These folding streets, these universal streets
Which wind and wind like sheets.