Farewell to IFAD

Mille Grazie

Mille Grazie:
I had my highs:
seven hills of Rome
and blood pressure.

I had my lows:
catacombs of Rome
and
work exhaustion.

Thank you all
for this lecture:

I learned
in bureacracies
processes
before
products

and

appearances
before
essence.

But never mind!

Orvieto and Arezzo
Napoli and Firenze
Venezia and Siena

San Gimignano
and the darling
of Sandra:
Perugia.

I saw them all.

On the lap
of Romans
I learned

and Hadrianus
spoke to me.
He said:
"You are giving me
bad advice, my friend
when you don't allow
me to regard
a man with thirty legions
as more learned
than anyone else."

But never mind!

If you think
we are paperless office:
look at Gunilla's table,
peep into JP's room,
and see what Christina
is copying.

And these
my parting words
to IFAD:

You are not
a son of Milis,
but
sister
of Ceres.

Where you think
you are going
with your military structure
words, and action
with divisions
targeting the poor?

Oh IFAD,
Open up
your stiff knots
uncross your arms
live your lines
and let it flow.

Let it flow
after I go.
Remember:
institutions just
empty buildings are,
unread paper,
limp laptops,
without people:
you and me.

Mille grazie!

Things that exist

Things that exist:
Conspiracies and
lies,
cowards and
slimes.

Things that exist:
Support and
smiles,
lovers and
hives.

With one leg
I limp,
with the other
I dance.

Forward
Backward
Singing and
sighing.

POEM OF THE WEEK

Giordano Bruno’s Prophesy

What a journey!

While descending

I climb.

While climbing

I descend.

By going back,

I move forward.

By withdrawing,

I expand.

Having returned

I already travel.

FACTION AND FICTION

Only observing life?
The lesson I learned in Siena was important: to observe carefully and then to write about it. Good writers do both well. They write with a painter's mind and eye to details, making the text alive with succinct descriptions. The text becomes alive not just with concereteness but also with rhytm that runs the story forward filling reader's mind with pictures. The pictures are being created by the reader and they are his own. The good writer only provides hints or elements for the reader's creative process.

This is important, but somehow not enough for me. I have to learn more. I instinctively thought that my road is to somehow combine fact and fiction. The idea was still hazy to me, but I nevertheless named one section of my blog as Faction and Fiction. Mysteriously - as if just in time - I read an hour ago what Jorge Semprun said about it. It struck immediately true to me. This is what I also want to do.

This is what Semprun says in his book "Literature and Life". He speaks about Malraux, who according to him, was always reworking and mixing the material of his writings with his life. He shed light on reality through fiction, and illuminated fiction through the extraordinary destiny of his life. And in all this, his aim was to get to the fundamental meaning of both life and art. According Semprun, this is only possible if you have lived an extraordinary life. Writer needs to have besides their writers' skills also a biography, to have led an interesting life.

And yet, even this is not all what I need to learn.

FACTION AND FICTION

In October 2003, I was in Siena attending a course on creative writing held by Canadian writers.
One of the exercises given to us, was to go to the Campo, the main piazza to observe life around us and then write a very small story on it.
Off I went and chose a restaurant and a table that had a good view over the piazza.
I ordered a simple pasta dish and thoroughly enjoyed it. Food for my stomach but not enough for thought! Then I took out my notepad and my pen, placing them on the table. I started observing. But nothing special was there. I waited and waited. People at the tables conversed lightly while enjoying their lunches. But not enough food for thought there either! Others were criss-crossing the piazza.

It seemed a hopeless exercise. Nothing to write about. I was waiting for some kind of inspiration. But nothing happened. Half an hour had gone. And then all of sudden, I started to see, and this is what I saw and what I wrote:

"The Jester on the Campo

Summer still lingers on in spotlights of sun.
In shadows fall waits. The clock in the bell
tower has only one hand. Exact time not
required?
A man you could easily ignore, if not for his
red beret, hobbles in from the cup of piazza’s
palm. He stops in front of Ristorante il Campo.
From under his jacket he pulls out a plastic
sprinkler and sprays water on hapless passers-by.
He brushes his teeth with a stick of tooth-brush
and grins. He takes out a comb fit for horse’s
tail and offers it to a bald man walking by.
He smiles lifting his eyebrows, mocking surprise.
No mock for the 17 clan flags of Siena. He
salutes them before walking away.
One day, the last hand in the clock will drop.
The Campo will rest in eternal time. The flags
will flutter. The jester will return, with a green
beret perhaps, with the same games but to a new
audience. He has a story to tell.
Will you listen?"

poems of the week

CROSSROADS

At the crossroads:
Which way to go?

Down the memory lane,
in trenches to hide,
lovers’ lane?

Finding paths:
at the grassroots
of poems,
in cities
of stories.

It matters only
how to go.
Gallop
Dance
Tango
Swirl with the Sufis.