San Lorenzo's night

Yesterday it was San Lorenzo’s day and so last night, following a well-established tradition in Italy, I went out looking for a shooting star. In fact San Lorenzo’s night is also known as the night of the shooting stars due to the appearance of a shower of meteorites which comes within the Earth’s orbit during this period. As usual, however, I didn’t manage to see a single one, and thus I couldn’t make a wish.

And San Lorenzo’s night immediately brings to my mind a poem that we used to study at school in Italy, X Agosto (The 10th of August) by Giovanni Pascoli. This poem describes the tragic death of the poet’s father, who was mysteriously killed on the night of San Lorenzo in 1867 while returning home from a farmer’s fair. In Pascoli’s poem, the shooting stars represent the tears of Heaven for his father’s death, and for the evil which afflicts our planet.