This music has lasted since the world began.
A rock was born among the waters
while tiny waves chatted in a soft universal tongue.
The shell of a se-turtle
would not have foretold the guitar.
Your music has always risen to the sky,
green taproot, Mother Sea,
first of all firsts. You enfold us,
nurturing us with music - threat,
fable, hypnosis, lullaby, roar,
omen, myth,
little agonies
of grit, of wreckages, of joys -
Maria Luisa Spaziani (b. 1924)
Translated by Beverly Allen
