Pier Paolo Pasolini

The birds sang in the dustin an elaborate weave, ambiguous,deafening, prey to existencepoor passions lost between the modestsummits of groves of mulberry and elder;and I, like them, in secluded placesreserved for the lost and pure,would wait for evening to fall,for the silent smells of fireand joyous misery to fill the air,for the Angelus bell to toll, veiledin the new peasant mysteryfulfilled in the ancient mystery.

Every day my anxiety is higher,every day the grief more mortal.Today more than yesterday terror exalts me_

The fury of confession, at first,then the fury of clarity:It was from you, Death, that such hypocriticalobscure feeling was born! And nowlet them accuse me of every passion,let them bad-mouth me, let them say I__ deformed,impure, obsessed, a dilettante, a perjurer.You isolate me, you give me the certainty of life,I__ on the stake. I play the card of fireand I win this little, immense goodness of mine.I can do it, for I have suffered you too much!I return to you as an émigré returnsto his own country and rediscovers it:I made a fortune (in the intellect)and I__ happy, as I once was,destitute of any norm,a black rage of poetry in my breast.A crazy old-age youth.Once your joy was confused with terror,it__ true, and now almost with other joy,livid and arid, my passion deluded.Now you really frighten me,for you are truly close to me,part of my angry state, of obscure hunger,of the anxiety almost of a new being.

If you know that I am an unbeliever, then you know me better than I do myself. I may be an unbeliever, but I am an unbeliever who has a nostalgia for a belief.

I don't believe we shall ever again have any form of society in which men will be free. One should not hope for it. One should not hope for anything. Hope is invented by politicians to keep the electorate happy.

First the mania for confession,then the mania for clarity,issued from you, dark, hypocriticalsentiment! Let them nowcondemn my every passion, let themdrag me through the mud, call me twisted,foul pervert, dilettante, perjurer;you keep me apart, give me life__ assurance:I burn at the stake, play the card of fireand win: I win this small,vast possession, my infinite,miserable pitywhich makes even righteous anger my friend.And I can do this because I__e endured you too long!

The revolution is now just a sentiment.

Behold those times re-created bythe brutal power of sunlit images,the light of life__ tragedy.The walls of the trial, the fieldof the firing squad; and the distantghost of Rome__ suburbs in a ring,gleaming white in naked light.Gunshots: our death, our survival.

I, too, head for the Baths of Caracalla,thinking__ith my old, magnificentprivilege of thinking_(And let there still be a god in me that thinks,lost, weak, and childish,yet whose voice is so humanit is almost a song.) Oh, to leavethis prison of poverty!To be free of the yearningthat makes these ancient nights so splendid!He who knows yearning, and he who does not,have something in common: man__ desires are humble.

We survive, in the confusionof a life reborn beyond reason.