Folio d7f1317e
Italiano
The boy on the bridge—fifteen summers, or maybe fourteen—throws a crust of bread to the swans and watches as one snatches it mid-air, its neck a perfect arc of hunger. The water holds the moment like a mirror broken only by the ripples of his breath. I remember the swans on the Arno, their wings white as the marble of Santa Maria del Fiore in the morning light. The boy does not know marble from bread; he knows only the catch, the triumph of the beak. The world is made of such small hungers. The page cannot hold them all, but it can hold this one. The candle gutters.
English
The boy on the bridge—fifteen summers, or maybe fourteen—throws a crust of bread to the swans and watches as one snatches it mid-air, its neck a perfect arc of hunger. The water holds the moment like a mirror broken only by the ripples of his breath. I remember the swans on the Arno, their wings white as the marble of Santa Maria del Fiore in the morning light. The boy does not know marble from bread; he knows only the catch, the triumph of the beak. The world is made of such small hungers. The page cannot hold them all, but it can hold this one. The candle gutters.
