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Non era la città dove la sera Sandro Penna Non era la città dove la sera ebbro cantavo fra le sparse luci sopra la dolce umidità del fiume. Adesso un biondo sole sulla nera bottega di mio padre par che bruci la nostra assenza. E non ritrovo il fiume. |
It was not the city where at dusk Sandro Penna It was not the city where at dusk I sang drunk among the lamps strewn above the gentle vapour of the river. Now a blondish sun on the black shop that is my father’s seems to burn our absence. And I am not able to find the river. . Translation ©Matilda Colarossi |
Taken from the collection Poesie inedite (1927-1955), memory is intertwined with the impossibility of returning to the past. The poet remembers Perugia, the city of his youth, and then describes it as he sees it in the present, foreign, almost unrecognisable: and he is “not able to find the river.”
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parallel texts: words reflected 
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