Avà rrevéte Polùcce… when sleep arrives before we do

Avà rrevéte Polùcce… and you can already feel it coming before anyone even says it, like a presence slipping quietly between one word and the next, between a held-back yawn and a sentence left unfinished, as the evening stretches on and the light softens, and your eyes – slowly, without asking permission – begin to give in, to blur, to close just enough for you to realise it’s only a matter of moments: it’s coming, it’s just around the corner, it’s already here; and then someone announces it, with that effortless familiarity that needs no explanation: “stè rrìve Polùcce”, as if it were truly a person, someone wandering through the town, passing beneath balconies, stepping into homes when it’s time to switch everything off and let go, someone who makes no sound yet is recognised by all, because when he arrives there is no resisting him, you may try to stay awake, to keep your eyes open, to follow the conversation, but at some point your head begins to drop, your body gives in and sleep claims what is its own; and within this everyday, almost tender scene lies an ancient story, distant in time yet still alive, a story that

comes from the Atti degli Apostoli, when San Paolo was speaking to the disciples on a night that seemed endless, with lamps lit and words flowing without pause, and there, on a windowsill, just as happens even now to anyone seeking a bit of air or a better position to fight off tiredness, sat a young man, Eutico, listening—or perhaps trying to—while sleep settled over him, heavier and heavier, more and more inevitable, until he could no longer hold it back, and he fell asleep, and he fell, and for a moment that night turned into tragedy; yet Paul went down, embraced him, brought him back to life, and then, almost as if nothing had happened, returned upstairs and continued speaking until dawn, because there are words that do not stop, that cannot stop, and perhaps it is for this very reason that, in popular memory, that episode took on a life of its own, softened, reshaped, transformed into something familiar, almost domestic—Polùcce, precisely—a presence that does not frighten but accompanies, that does not make you fall but makes you yield, that does not bring tragedy but sleep; and so today, when we say it, we are no longer thinking of a fall from the third floor, but of that fragile, suspended moment when you are no longer fully awake yet not entirely gone, when other people’s words drift away and the world begins to blur, and it is exactly there that Polùcce passes, punctual, silent, inevitable; and perhaps, deep within this simple, gentle word, there still lingers a more subtle echo, the one that San Paolo himself suggested, speaking of another kind of sleep—not of the body, but of the spirit, the kind that does not make you fall from a window but can make you lose your way without even realising it—and so Polùcce becomes more than a shared yawn, it becomes memory, a quiet warning, one of those words that dialect preserves without ever explaining, allowing it to live on, from one evening to the next, from one voice to another, between a smile and a moment of drowsiness, because in Turi certain things are never fully explained: they are simply recognised.

Sources: Atti degli Apostoli (20:7–12); reworked from a text by Prof. Raffaele Valentini – article reworked by Miriam Valentini