Sunset at Fossoli

I know what it means not to return.
Through the barbed wire
I saw the sun go down and die.
I felt the words of the old poet
Tear at my flesh:
'Suns can go down and return
For us, when the brief light is spent
There is an unending night to be slept'*

(7-2-1946)

Primo Levi, Collected Poems, Ruth Feldman e Brian Swan (trad.), Faber and Faber, 1992

*soles occidere et redire possunt
nobis cum semel occidit breuis lux,
nox est perpetua una dormienda.

Catullus, Carmen V