Paolo Borsoni's poem, winner of the #TiDedicoUnRicordo competition

TIME AND THE SOUL

His mind became confused.

When I went to visit her,

no longer recognised me.

I was an outsider

happened to be in that room by mistake.

And me, sitting next to her,

I no longer knew what to say to her.

I watched her for hours

in silence under a clock

always marking the same moment.

A winter morning

I bent down to caress the hems

of his embroidered robe

shining in a sunbeam

filtered through the glass.

"What a beautiful dressing gown you have."

I whispered under my breath,

with words on their lips

from who knows what forgotten corner

of time, of memories, of the soul.

'It is such a delicate blue'

I heard whispering.

I looked up in surprise.

But his mind was already rapt again

in the corners where the seasons were lost,

the memories, the sighs.

For one shy word

the wall of silence had broken

with that emotion

that everything manages to revive

in this bitter, sweet life,

and that everything leads back to his awakening,

to an unexpected spark of light

in our inadvertent fall

in a subdued, absolute silence