The Little Book of the Dead - Luigi

When I looked at you, I looked as you ought look at me.
I watched you, and what I saw could be you.
Was what I felt what you felt?
Was my body ever given to you?

Was your body ever given to me?

With all the leaves gone almost from the trees,
I did not walk briskly away from the thought of you.
It was cold and icy outside, and soon it would be the snow.

I looked at the sky, at the high open place
Along the avenue where you were the last time I saw you
I tried to feel the same way you felt before you left.

Leaving for there where all must go.

I think of you and I ask myself, "What did you teach me?"
Silence is the answer. From you, I learned to be silent.

I remember you visiting our parents. You arrived silently. You exchanged a few words. You sat down and watched them without saying a word. Your visits used to last no more than 30 minutes. Ha fatto la visita del prete used to say mother.
Now I understand your being silent. It was your daimon. The daimon who guided you for your entire life. He was guiding you, even when we were kids. Un bambino taciturno, people used to say about you when we were kids.

Have you been taciturno because a deep, bottomless tristezza was possessing you?
Was that silence, the surface of your groundless tristezza, that made you suffer in this world and pushed you to concoct complex architectures of lies?
I am not sure whether you were better than me, but I have never suspected that you could lie all your life to save that little child—triste and taciturno—who moved you in your life upon this earth.

You are dying tonight. This dystopian world you believed in has killed you.

I am sitting on the terrace, and far, far away, the dawn is coming.
But a sudden haze has risen and is now covering the horizon.

I think of you—your name on my lips. I pray for you, watching beyond the trees.
We all die unknown on this earth, where we pass fleetingly, like a stranger.
Ti voglio bene, Luigi. I love you.