All Soul’s Day
Gina has lighted a large candle for her dead. She lit it in the kitchen; the dead are many and not near. It is necessary to return to when she was a child and breakfast coffee was a fistful of dried chestnuts. It is necessary to recreate a father, small and old, and his long walks to find a drop of sweet wine for her. He himself could drink neither sweet nor dry wines because money was lacking and he had to feed the piglets she used to bring to pasture. Among the dead one can include the school mistress who used to award the rod to the frozen fingers of the child. Dead also, are some of the living and half-alive about to board the ferry. It is a large number of next to nothing because they have brought no piglets to pasture.
— translated from the Italian by Giovanni Malto