Up there, in fact, the wind turns into the planet’s enigmatic breathing. The morning breeze blows out toward the sea and returns warmer in the evening toward land.

In that oasis which welcomes my exodus I sense the idleness of old men, I listen to the dull, mounting din of birds breaking into song, to silence, to the cry of joy that greets the day, to the sounds of life in the valley that are deflected, with the clinking of artisans meeting the moans of plows furrowing the land. 

Then there is that silence which is “not silent”, being the language of nature and the universe. Not only – it is also an ongoing locution that we risk interrupting with our sudden, fragmented comments.

And so, in this refuge of solitude, as the day takes leave for men and all life, abandoning the hollows of the hills and eclipsing among the crevices of arid mounds, the soul is filled with nostalgia for loved ones and contact with the human world: because it is precisely in isolation that wholeness may be best appreciated.

The heart passes from a state of melancholy to one of universal generosity that is born of an acute perception of the frailty of humanity, life and beauty – of all that is hoped for and promised.

Mario Luzi, from “Terra di vento e di deserto” in Mi guarda Siena.