December by Diego Valeri is a poem of great emotional impact, in which the natural surroundings becomes an expression of the poet’s state of mind. On the one hand the stormy night, on the other the quiet of the morning awakening seem to offer a message of profound meaning. Whatever storm may strike the lives of humans,ther will always be an awakening of peace.
Nature thus becomes an ambassador of hope and resistance to daily suffering, reminding us that, even after the darkest darkness, there will always come a moment of light capable of restoring enchantment to reality.
December is taken from the collection Poems, 1910 – 1960 by Diego Valeri, published in Milan by Mondadori in 1962.
Let’s read this original and intense poem by Diego Valeri, to experience its sensitivity and understand its meaning.
December by Diego Valeri
Sad winds driven away from the sea
they stirred the night city.
From black gorges opened between the houses
they broke, invisible
shadows, with crashes and screams;
they threw themselves into the deserted streets
still in the white frost of the headlights,
they banged on the doors
barred, they clung to death
copper of sorrowful trees,
they slid along smooth walls,
they vanished away, serpents,
with long whistles and slow crawls…Now I lean into the astonished peace
of the gray morning: everything is silent.
The sky is tense with pale bandages.
The large cypress, absorbed, with its greenery
strange, in the high light. A shiny shard
among the brown earth of the garden.
Windows without curtains, gloomy,
they look around. There is no human voice,
bird cry, noise of life,
in the vast and vain air.
There is only one dove,
all clear and blonde,
that climbs the slope in small steps
of a roof,on carpets
fawns of velvety wool,and it truly seems
a sweet queen
of Sheba
that you go back up the silent stairs
of his fairy tale.
Beauty survives any storm
December is a poem by Diego Valeri that does not limit itself to describing a winter landscape, but gives a profound reflection on hope. In poetry, nature becomes the mirror of an internal path typical of human existence.The storm is part of man’s life and when it arrives it makes its effects felt in the mind and soul.
However, the message that the Venetian poet shares is positive and bright. Even after the darkest night and in the midst of the most desolate void, life finds a way to manifest itself. Just one detail, a small movement of grace, like that of a “dove”, is enough to transform a gray reality into a precious fairy tale. Beauty, valeri teaches, is a resistant force that is just waiting to be noticed to redeem the world from its greyness.
The night and the violence of the wind
The first part of the poem is dominated by a dark and threatening
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