The bicycle

by Giovanni Pascoli

I know that it has nothing to do with it but when I took this picture, I immediately thought of this little poem by Pascoli

In the hedge I seemed to hear
the waking-up of a querulous plumeless bird.
An instant... I perceived the drear
din of the river.
I seemed to glimpse a golden sea
of quivering corn.
A beat... I saw a row
of black cypress trees.
I seemed to be piercing the weeping
of a long procession of pain.
A throb... Besides me
were marriage and love.
dlin... dlin...
They still echoed, the screams
of the unnameable crowd;
I heard the locusts chirp
on the wet clod.
He told me short words,
somebody who ploughed in the flat land:
when I answered, you held
the sickle in your hand.
I told a winged word,
fleeting virgin, to you;
an old and lonely woman heard it,
who was talking to herself.
dlin... dlin...
My land, my feeble road,
is it you that go or is it me?
Who cares? If it’s me who come or you who go,
it is only a farewell!
But it is beautiful, this force of wing,
but it is grateful, the thrill of the day.
And yet sweet is the rest... The night
is falling: I come back.
The small lamp shines
in the middle of the gloomy town.
More slowly the little bell
gives a beat, and it goes...
dlin... dlin...

Translation by Francesca Del Moro