A vast pride swelled in our breasts, to feel ourselves standing alone, like lighthouses or advanced guards, facing the army of enemy stars that camp in heavenly bivouacs. And unexpectedly, like festive villages that the Po in flood suddenly unsettles and uproots to sweep them off, over the falls and eddies of a deluge, to the sea, we were disturbed by the rumbling of enormous double-decker trams, passing in fits and starts, streaked with lights. Then the silence got worse. As we listened to the exhausted prayer of the old canal and heard the grating bones of palaces moribund in their greenery whiskers, all of a sudden hungry cars roared beneath our windows. At last Mythology and the mystic Ideal have been surpassed.
Nothing equals the splendor of our red sword battling for the first time in the millennial gloom.
We approached the three snuffling machines to stroke their breasts. The great broom of folly tore us from ourselves and swept us through the streets, precipitous and profound like dry torrent beds. Here and there, unhappy lamps in windows taught us to despise our mathematical eyes. And we pursued, alike to young lions, Death of the dark fur spotted with pale crosses, that slipped ahead of us in the vast mauve sky, palpable and alive. We went on, crushing the watchdogs on the thresholds of houses, leaving them flattened under our tires like a collar under the iron.