Molti soldati
L'idea danzava davanti a noi come una bandiera ;
the sound of martial music;
the excitement of bringing a gun;
honors in the world to return home;
a glimmer of glory, rage against the enemies ;
a dream of duty to the country or for God
But these were things within us, shining before us,
were not the power behind us,
that it was the Almighty hand of Life, as the
fire that creates the mountains in the center of the earth, or waters enclosed
that corrode.
you remember the band of iron that the blacksmith
Shack Dye, welded
around the oak tree on the lawn Bennet
to hang a hammock,
where he could rest his daughter Janet, and read
summer afternoons?
And the tree, growing eventually split the band
iron?
But not a cell in the whole tree
knew nothing except that vibrates with life ,
nor the amounts which the hammock
fell in the dust with Milton's poems.
From: "Spoon River Anthology" by Edgar Lee Masters (Edited by Letizia Ciotti Miller).
