This body won't start again. Touching his eye sockets <br />one feels a heap of earth is more alive, <br />that the earth, even at dawn, does not keep itself so quiet. <br />But a corpse is the remains of too many awakenings. <br /> <br />We only have this power: to start <br />each day of life—before the earth, <br />under a silent sky—waiting for an awakening. <br />One is amazed by so much drudgery at dawn; <br />through awakening within awakening a job is done. <br />But we live only to shudder <br />at the labor ahead and to awaken the earth one time. <br />It happens at times. Then it quiets down along with us. <br /> <br />If touching that face the hand would not shake— <br />if the live hand would feel alive touching it— <br />if it's true that that cold is only the cold <br />of the earth, frozen at dawn, <br />perhaps it'd be an awakening, and things that keep quiet <br />under the dawn, would speak up again. But my hand <br />trembles, and of all things resembles a hand <br />that doesn't move. <br /> <br />At other times waking up at dawn <br />was a dry pain, a tear of light, <br />even a deliverance. The stingy word <br />of the earth was cheerful, for a brief moment, <br />and to die was to go back there again. Now, the waiting body <br />is what remains of too many awakenings and doesn't return to the earth. <br />They don't even say it, the hardened lips.<br /><br />Cesare Pavese<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/end-of-fantasy/
