Homer called them "crescent shaped horned oxen",
and he was right, as the impressive arch
placed upside down their mild heads
reminds very much the crescent moon,
when it goes to bed at dawn, half asleep,
after a whole night of carousals.
they come from Lydia, brought by the Etruscans,
and today they are bigger, and very much,
and could not even get into
those stunted row-propelled wooden ships.
looking at them today, while they come grazing,
living monuments of a so far past,
lovely bred up in an agrarian school,
is a really contradictory matter:
this nice park for middle class people
so eager of making a return to Nature,
is a bit fake, like it's unavoidable
in any natural park of this planet
where they think to tame Nature down.
today, anyway, this place is a triumph
in gold and blue, in this very mild Fall
counterbalancing the incredible quackery
of the inhabitants of this poor Country.
it's such an unbeliable happiness
to be free to walk safe along this path
free from cars and from their farting tins.
with Celeste, which can at last run
free from perils and lashes, as well,
lovingly smelling the whole universe;
but if we have to pass between two oxen,
which quietly and saintly are browsing there,
at the two sides of this large path,,
the matter gets hard, since it's pure terror!
"We can't really do that, stupid human,
those are two mountains, and if they get us
in their premises, we're nice and done for!"
so she stops, paralized with the fear,
because she has such a headless master
to be unable to realize the danger.
okay, we must then come to a compromise:
we shall pass between them anyway,
but running fast, to make their tricks harder.
as agreed, we flew as far as we could,
stopping far enough, only when we got
really out of breath: "We did it, fellah,
sensless human: if it hadn't been for me,
they would now be having their lunch
with our bodies: and it's not too bad
that you own a dog with a head
on its paws!"