“… and a meadow is here, and, at the same time, in the cosmos!”

—

“I looked at the flowers at my feet, that grew up amidst the grim and innocent weeds: I was like them, the ones incredulous at death, and destined to a life of just a few days. Little flowers without names: unnamed, and so many, one equal to the other, scattered by chance along the sides of the muddy path, one equal to the other not only in its sublime unattainable form, with its clear blue almost white out of humility, with its candor, for poverty, faded into violet or yellow, like watered down wine—but one equal to the other in the ignorance of frailty, of vanity: of the smallness of their life…

I observe, in them, how much I resemble them: an indistinct brother, who trembles, surprises himself, regains his spirit, with the sun, in the morning, credulous of the eternity which morning again steals from the one who wakes up, and begins again, like an eager father…

Little flowers that come from regions of the past never dead in the cosmos—and they settle there, according to the caprice of sun and wind, like tribes of gypsies that never choose their places to camp, but leave it to chance.

I too, like a flower—I was thinking—nothing other than an uncultivated flower, obey the necessity that wishes me to be overtaken by the gladness that comes after discouragement. Then surely something will come again to offend and massacre me: but for me too, like the flowers of other springs, the past is blended with the present, and a meadow is here, and, at the same time, in the cosmos!”

Pier Paolo Pasolini, The Divine Mimesis (trans. Thomas E. Peterson)