Is there no one,
no one selling
flowers
along this unlucky street?
And this dark sea,
this gloomy sky,
this hostile wind –
oh, yesterday’s camellias,
camellias white and red, smiling
in the golden cloister –
a spring mirage!
Who’ll sell me a flower today?
I have so many in my heart:
but all clasped
in heavy bunches –
trampled –
done in.
I have so many that my soul
suffocates and nearly dies
under their vast unshared
mass.
But at the bottom of the dark sea
is the heart’s key –
at the bottom of the dark heart
until evening
my useless harvest
will lie
imprisoned –
O who will sell me
a flower – a different flower,
born outside of me,
in a true garden,
that I might offer the one who awaits?
Is there no one,
no one who will sell me
flowers
along this unhappy path?
14 February 1933
Antonia Pozzi
trad. Peter Robinson
