Dino Campano

 

The night

Their shadows slithered along the ruined reddish walls: he followed, robotically. He said to the woman one word that fell in the silence of the afternoon: an old man turned to look at him with a gaze absurd shining and empty. And the woman smiled always a smile feeble in the afternoon aridity, stupid and alone in the catastrophic light.

Translated from the Italian by Sonya Gray Redi