Home > Work > Selected Poems
1 " IndifferenceThis hate has blossomed like a living love,grieving, watching its own exhaustion.It seeks a face, it seeks flesh, as though it were love.The worldly flesh and the voices that spokeare dead, all has shuddered away,all life hangs on a voice.Days pass in bitter ecstasy to the sadcaress of the voice that returnsand drains the blood from our faces. Not without sweetnessthat voice returns to the mind exhaustedand trembling: once it trembled for me.But the flesh does not tremble. Only lovecould set it alight, this hate seeks it out.All the possessions, all the flesh and all the voicesin the world cannot equal the burning caressof that body and those eyes. In the bitter ecstasythat kills itself, this hate still findseach day a glance, a broken word,and grasps them, hungrily, like love. "
― Cesare Pavese , Selected Poems