Dawn’s faint breath breathes with your mouth at the ends of empty streets. Gray light your eyes, sweet drops of dawn on dark hills. Your steps and breath like the wind of dawn smother houses. The city shudders, Stones exhale— you are life, an awakening.

Star lost in the light of dawn, trill of the breeze, warmth, breath— the night is done.

You are light and morning.

*original title by Pavese in English, written for his lover, the American actress Constance Dowling

Notes: As I looked out into the foggy vistas, here - somewhere in the Austrian Alps - my mind went back to this poem