The will is there,
and the ink is not lacking.
But words struggle,
in an incessant battle.
I’d like to surrender,
it seems so tender.
Laid down exhausted,
won but not busted.
Instead, here I am!
Ready to do my jam.
I am fresh like a rat,
on the shoulder, my pat.
On the 28th of September,
The heat spoke louder,
You tried to dismember,
It pumped up with power,
You felt it too uncomber,
buy it was going to be slower,
That’s why you felt better,
Try to remember.
La ferita è dolorante,
La cura meticolosa,
Il fuoco latente,
Ma proprio non è cosa.
La delusione è cocente,
L’ardito riposa.
La trama lucente
Nell’immaginazione, sontuosa.
When it’s over, I don’t want everything to go back to the way it was.
I don’t want to go back to clog the streets.
I don’t want to go back to invading the skies, to plunder the seas, to wear out the earth.
I don’t want to go back to health to breathe sick air.I don’t want to waste time in traffic or waiting for public transport, meeting indifferent glances as if sadness were common life.
I don’t want to go back to a male-sized world that made the rest of humanity “the others, the last, the different”.
I don’t want to go back to a performing society that is afraid to stop in order not to lose an unsustainable record.
I don’t want to go back to a fast time, which no longer dances with the cyclical nature of women and nature.And I don’t want to, I certainly don’t want to go back to a world of grown-ups.
I want to be in a small world for children, where life is an infinite possibility to play without leaving anyone on the sidelines.
Where nobody is another’s game but everyone is played and brings joy and their difference to make us learn.I want a world that changes the rules of being together to keep everyone, absolutely everyone in.
You too who feel ignored. And you, who think you are defeated.I want a shrewd world where things are made for the most sensitive and before making an important gesture, ask themselves: will it bring more love? Will it hurt, especially the most defenseless?
I no longer want to go back to mass society, with mass tourism, mass consumerism, and mass culture.
I want a whole fragmented world.
I want a mosaic, where each one is a slow and precious fragment, and where there is no need for bars or bans to notice the grace of this springtime.
—Giorgia Vezzoli, 21 March 2020
Thanks to Giorgia, the author, for allowing me to translate her work.