The Coffeehouse Philosopher
People differ the way one coffee bean
in a sack will differ from another
when they’re spooned into some expresso machine
to meet the fate they all come to together.
They go round and round, behind, before,
always changing places; they’ve barely begun
when there they go through that iron door
that crushes them into powder, all one.
So all the people live on this earth,
mixed together by fate, swirled around
and changing places, bumping along from birth.
not knowing or caring why, some out of breath,
some taking it easy, all sinking toward the ground
to be gulped down by the throat of death.
—Giuseppe Gioachino Belli (translated by Miller Williams)
—found in Sonnets of Giuseppe Belli (1981; this poem composed ca. 1830-1839)
—view in original Italian (Romanesco, dialect of the core of the Metropolitan City of Rome Capital)