These stories by Penna resemble watercolors. Two or three colors, humble landscapes, children playing or riding bicycles. Friends parting ways as Penna's watchful eye observes and sketches them.

Penna is neither a neoplatonic nor an old hedonist. He considers nothing the touch - he does not speak of love - high art and worship. A few phrases from a departing milkman, a stranger are enough for him to get through the rest of his day. He does not worry about tomorrow - tomorrow at some station, at some neglected point of this city - is Rome, Perugia; he will see something and like an ancient infant, he will stand again to sketch it.

This volume of stories is complemented, as an "epimetro," by the inclusion of his poems - with corrections and changes from their first publication in issues 3, 4, 5 of the magazine "Odos Panos". The reader will recognize in the poems what he records in his prose.