St Lawrence, I know why so many stars through the still air burn out and fall, why so many tears glitter in the dome of the sky.
A swallow was returning to her roof when they killed her. She fell among thorns. She had an insect in her beak: dinner for her brood.
Now she is there, as on a cross, offering that worm to that distant sky; and her nest is in the shadows, they are waiting, peeping softer and softer.
A man was also returning to his nest when they killed him. He said: I forgive, a scream remaining in his open eyes. He was bringing a gift of two dolls.
Now there, in the lonely home, they’re waiting, waiting in vain; he, motionless, astonished, offers the dolls to the distant sky.
And you, Heaven, from on high above all worlds, serene, infinite, immortal, oh! with the weeping stars will you flood this opaque atom of Evil!
Every summer, the Perseid meteor shower illuminates the night sky in one of the most spectacular meteor showers of the year. It reaches its peak in mid-August, overlapping with the feast of St. Lawrence on Aug. 10. For this reason, the Persieds are also known as the “tears of Saint Lawrence.” Folk legend holds that the “falling stars” are the tears of the martyred saint of the early Church.Martyred for his faith in A.D. 258, St. Lawrence was a Roman deacon during the rule of Emperor Valerian, who issued an edict that all bishops, priests, and deacons must be put to death. St. Lawrence had been charged with the responsibility of the Church’s material goods. When he knew he would be arrested, he donated the Church’s money and goods to the poor.
When the prefect of Rome demanded that St. Lawrence bring him the treasure of the Church, St. Lawrence assembled the city’s poor, sick, and orphaned and presented them to the prefect, saying, “These are the treasures of the Church.” The prefect sentenced St. Lawrence to a slow death of being burned alive on a gridiron.
Falling Stars
More than 1600 years later, another death on Aug. 10 became the subject of a poem incorporating the folk legend of the “tears of St. Lawrence.“ Published in 1896, Giovanni Pascoli’s poem “August 10th” (written in Italian as ”X Agosto") opens with the speaker addressing the saint with the claim that he knows why so many stars fall from the heavens. Pascoli writes:St Lawrence, I know why so many stars through the still air burn out and fall, why so many tears glitter in the dome of the sky.
In this confidential tone, the speaker reveals that he is no stranger to suffering. When Pascoli was only 12, his father was murdered on the feast day of St. Lawrence in 1867, while returning home from a market in Cesena. The poem gives us a glimpse into the poet’s grappling with incomprehensible grief over this senseless event.
Nesting Swallow
All three of these events assume still greater importance as they are united with the death of Christ. The martyr dying for his faith, the swallow bringing food back to the nest, and the father who dies bringing gifts to his children all turn their gaze literally heavenward, no longer able to serve those on earth.Pascoli’s use of the swallow is “as on a cross, offering/ that worm to that distant sky,” unites them to the death of the perfectly innocent man. Each of the figures in the poem is killed in the act of giving. But the journeys of the swallow and the poet’s father are incomplete: They offer their gifts to the “distant sky” (“cielo lontano”) while the nearby house and nest fall into shadow.
Order Out of Chaos
In “August 10th,” Pascoli brings the poem full circle by returning to the image of the stars, moving from the universal to the particular and returning once more to the universal. In so doing so, he draws a certain order from otherwise incomprehensible and disordered events. While the familial nest might be broken, his poem crafts a new, metaphorical circle out of the act that tore apart the literal nest.Witnessing the atrocities of man below, the heavens are stretched out “above all worlds, serene, infinite, immortal.” In contrast to their vast expanse of peace and eternity, the Earth is minimized to an “opaque atom of Evil,” and the all-absorbing atrocities in the poem suddenly unfold on a miniscule stage. Their gravity is undiminished, but the force of their evil is overwhelmingly swept away by the Heavens mourning the world’s injustice: “with the weeping stars will you flood/ this opaque atom of Evil!”
This is reminiscent of the biblical flood which God sent when He saw the wickedness of man; he said he would return the world to its pre-creation state. The flood of stars returns us to the beginning of the poem with the first mention of the tears of St. Lawrence.
In the last stanza, Pascoli shows that, though the world’s evil destroyed these particular lives, it is not the final conqueror. The last word is given to heavenly justice. Though the horrors described in the poem aren’t wiped from memory or reality, the perspective shifts to view them through the lens of eternity and to show readers that both nature and Heaven partake in the grief caused by these injustices.
