We look, my daughter and I,
At our shadows upon the gravel;
Small shadows, of a tint
Between rose-pink and purple.
We look above, and “Oh!”
My daughter cries with joy.
For just today have sprouted
On the branches little buds,
Some opening up in flowers,
Some shut in verdant rows.
She laughs; and her toddler’s laughter
Blends with the bright green hues
Born into being above us
This morning—and blends, too,
With the shadows down below.
Sul vial
Vardemo, mi e mia fia,
le ombre su la giarina:
pice ombre de ’na tinta
tra rosa e zelestina.
Vardemo in suso; e un Oh!
ela la fa contenta.
Vignude apena fora
ghe xe le foietine
sui rami, averte ancora
una sì una no.
La ridi: e quel su’ rìder
de fiola se combina
col verde che xe nato
là suso stamatina,
co’ ’ste ombre qua zo.
In six volumes of verse Virgilio Giotti (1887–1957) fashioned an utterly unique voice within the Italian literary landscape. Born in Trieste when the city was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire, Giotti chose to write in a refined variant of his local dialect rather than in standard literary Italian. This allowed him to sidestep the bookish and oratorical aspects of the Italian tradition and to tap into the stream of popular European lyric running from archaic Greece to German Lieder. Giotti added to this an acute visual sensibility all his own and an interest in contemporary aesthetic debates. Although his use of dialect has rendered his work less well-known than it ought to be, Giotti has been celebrated by the likes of E. Montale and P. P. Pasolini and is the object of increasing interest from Italian scholars and critics. His natural peers are lyricists like Sappho, Heine, and Hardy.