Lucio Piccolo (1901-1969)

Not far from Catania (see Saturday's post) is Messina, home of Lucio Piccolo, a cousin of another well-born Sicilian, Prince Lampedusa, whose The Leopard (1958) stands as one of the great novels of modern Italy. Piccolo wrote, too. Not novels but poems.

Here is "Mutable World" (translated by Sonia Raiziss and Alfredo de Palchi):

Mutable World

 

Mutable world of gusty

rays, hours without colour, or perennial

flux, the pomp

of clouds: an instant and look -- the changed

forms dazzle, millenniums sway.

            And the low door’s arch and the worn

sill of too many winters, are a fable in the abrupt

glory of the March sun.