Hawthorn.

 ... and came March, and you, thin peasant,

you remained in the middle, so with the feathers,

but bare feet, like a bird:

like the bird from the sea,

that between the cherry jumps, and does not

know besides the pecking, the singing, the loving,

there is another happiness.

At the time of the elementary school (1946-1951) the poems were learned by heart. They were musical, it was easy. I still remember the sweet poetry of Pascoli "Valentino", which at that time seemed to have been written for me! The hawthorn bloomed on the stony ground of Knoll, and often barefoot or with wooden clogs, while I parried the sheep, the pungent cold and then the explosion of spring and the cuckoo that came and I asked him for something, something mysterious learned on the maternal hearth, which said, more or less: cuculin coming from the sea, tell me, how many years can I marry? and, as the poet says, I knew nothing of life, beyond pecking and singing and loving. A big word, the latter, because my family was soon broken. But, however, as in the darker fairy tales, happiness came. Perhaps it is because of the nostalgia of those distant years, no longer illuminated by the light of memory, that I love to return to those wild hills, to see again the trembling of the sea, the red sun that plunges in it, the rustling palers, listen to the singing of the cuckoos, rediscovering the ancient sloes and springs, and be amazed by the whiteness of the thorn, a pungent and imperforable shrub, behind which I rested to dream, sheltered from the north wind and the icy winds of life.