The Cats Will Know BY CESARE PAVESE Rain will fall again on your smooth pavement, a light rain like a breath or a step. The breeze and the dawn will flourish again when you return, as if beneath your step. Between flowers and sills the cats will know. There will be other days, there will be other voices. You will smile alone. The cats will know. You will hear words old and spent and useless like costumes left over from yesterday’s parties. You too will make gestures. You’ll answer with words— face of springtime, you too will make gestures. The cats will know, face of springtime; and the light rain and the hyacinth dawn that wrench the heart of him who hopes no more for you— they are the sad smile you smile by yourself. There will be other days, Other voices and renewals. Face of springtime, We will suffer at daybreak. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx “The Cats Will Know” from Disaffections: complete poems (1930-1950) by Cesare Pavese. Published in 2002 by Copper Canyon Press. PS: Most Italians first encountered Herman Melville, James Joyce, William Faulkner, Charles Dickens, Gertrude Stein, John Steinbeck, John Dos Passos, and Daniel Defoe in Pavese's translations, and also encountered their influence, and echoes of their meditations, in Pavese's novels, short stories, and poems.