My Mother Earth

 

Who knows where I've been in the last twenty centuries?

May be I was a roman soldier

guarding the Adrian Wall

where I met a pale blue eyes blonde love

to warm my winters

to show me love is anywhere

anyhow.

and I was scattered back

on some Mediterranean  coast

groping with the Normans

a new life, which is also

and again an old life;

like that I had as Greek's slave

before my manumission

when I captured those

I had been conquered by.

And when  I'll be searching

for other worlds

far in the skies

will I remember

 my Mother Earth?

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07H44DYF7

Beyond the Hadrian Wall

My heart is sad, today. Our English friends have gone away from Europe. Our brotherhood is ended in the worst way. Of course I respect whato English people have just chosen on the polls. Nevertheless I feel sad. I dreamed, and I still dream, The United States of Europe and in my dreams England was a must to be part of it. I have in mind Jo Cox, killed because she was fond of EU. And still I think that this choose is the result of more than a mistake. But I made up my mind and I accept what the polls have decreed. Let me say, anyway, the paradox I see on the table: The Scots, cut off two thousands years ago by the Hadrian Wall, for they didn't want to be part of Roman Civilisation, now are complaining for their exclusion from Europe. And the English, who were so proud to be on this side of the wall, are now off.  I am a bit confused, and I also feel   a sense of betrayal on the history path. But that's politic! that's reality.  

My Mother Earth

My Mother Earth

Who knows where I've been in the last twenty centuries?

May be I was a roman soldier

guarding the Adrian Wall

where I met a pale blue eyes blonde love

to warm my winters

to show me love is anywhere

anyhow.

and I was scattered back

on some Mediterranean  coast

groping with the Normans

a new life, which is also

and again an old life;

like that I had as Greek's slave

before my manumission

when I captured those

I had been conquered by.

And when  I'll be searching

for other worlds

far in the skies

will I remember

 my Mother Earth?

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0165T61NE

Memoirs of London - 6

In 1979 I was back on the road to work for the B.B.C., a company that, apart from the initials of its name, had nothing else to share with British state television. In fact, the Benjamin Building Company did not afflict people with boring programs, neither it  talked with shameless lies about national and international political events. Finally my Company did not even put its nose in the lives of the Queen and the other members of the Royal Family,  generally speaking.

The company I worked for delighted their customers  by selling ice cream and drinks, logistically relying on a chain’s shop of souvenirs, sweets and tobacco’s  strategically located at several points in the great London area known as West End.

 This vast and famous London metropolitan area, which also includes Soho district and numerous small and large parks, is bordered by a perimeter that runs through the important streets of Oxford Street, Charing Cross Rd, Shaftesbury Av and Regent's Street, forming an irregular trapeze whose four tops pass from Tottenham Court Rd to Oxford Circus; from there to Piccadilly Circus and  finally end at Leicester Square, couple of yards   from Trafalgar Square, where Admiral Nelson's statue, according to the likely intentions of the public authorities who wanted it so powerfully high, witnessed  the  British’s greatness and glory to all those who would walk from there: French people, foreigners  and British from all over the Empire.

 In those years, the greatness and glory of England, after the almost total depletion of the British Empire,  seemed more remote and far from the statue of the great conductor of the seas. And nostalgia, it’s all over known, is a feeling that more acutely manifests itself, when the best times are over and  a crisis is bound to come.

 And that Great Britain was in crisis at the end of the seventies of the twentieth century, it immediately became apparent also to the "street traders" who, living among the people, felt the moods of the average citizen in an emotionally direct way.

 On the street, they felt discomfort and nervousness, though the real troubles were still to come, shortly thereafter, with the irresistible rise to power of the Conservatives headed by Margareth Tatcher (later known as the “Iron Lady"), which would mark the end of a cycle in London's administrative life, characterized by a policy of traditional securing of democratic freedoms and sympathy for the weaker social classes.

Moreover, the English metropolis had represented since the rising of the first music liberation and protest groups (born on the wave of the American Hippies movement, also known as the "beat generation") a decisive cultural reference point, helping to make London the Capital of the Rock Movement, where refugees disappointed by the illusion of the failed revolution of 1968, could find a safe refuge escape from the backflow of the reaction which  had gone through  the whole world.

And it was right there, in London, that they could still see the last glow of brightness before its definite sunset. So, in a good way, I agreed to resume my job and sell ice-creams and drinks in the street. By my side I had a refrigerating machine that turned milk into ice cream and a refreshing machine dispensing orange and lemonade.

Where  else could I work, let alone  the road? And to do what? Maybe to get into some office with air conditioning in the summer, heating in the winter, and the stench of paperwork under my nose? There was no other world for me, now, if not that; no other destiny, no other life I could have wanted, than the free life  of street's traders.

 Returning to the road meant for me to relive from the very beginning my adventure in that mysterious and fascinating city that, unfortunately and superficially, is too often considered cold and inhospitable, considering also that never or almost never come into you get a direct contact with English or British people.

 This story is devoted to London and to the dear places where I have lived in.  But it is also dedicated to all the peoples that those places with such variety and vivacity animated in those years who will pass through the main scene of my story: the streets of London.

6. to be continued...

Beyond the Hadrian Wall

Scottish PM Nicola Sturgeon has called for a new referendum on Scotland leaving the UK. 

That's a straight consequence of  premier May triggering the article 50 of European Treaty in order to drive UK out of EU ( the so called Brexit). 

Edinborough does not want to leave Bruxelles and Scottish people want to remain in the European Union. 

As matter of fact the large majority of Scots voted for remaining in the june referendum last year. 

So London risks to pay a very high price leaving EU. 

But if Edinborough succeeds on its idea of breaking the unity with London, then we will have to say that English have succeeded where even the Roman Empire had failed: joining the Caledonian lands to the western civilised countries, while England will remain off the Hadrian Wall.

 I ask my English friends if it is worth all this.

 Please, put apart your pride and come back on your steps. 

EU needs to be changed from inside. 

We need London staying with us. We want Scotland staying within. 

Can anyone do anything to stop an odd and casual disaster like Brexit seems to be? 

Anyway, London will be in my heart for ever.

A Brotherhood of European People

I feel it's a real shame the exit of Great Britain from European Union. Of course I totally respect the decision taken by British People the last 23rd of June but  let my dreams soar in the sky. I have dreamed of a Great Europe where the Italians start studying English language at six and French Schools teach italian culture in one with their own culture and together with the other European stories and knowledge. And I've dreamed of a unique country from the Adrian Wall to the Atlantic Ocean and from there to Sicily and up to River Rhine in Deutchland...

Sorry to be a dreamer but I can't live with out.

And once you have known It London is for ever.

Dante and his time - III

It should take too long to show, through the past centuries, how it came to be, at Dante’s time, the balance of powers. As matter of fact Dante found a world that was dying, an ancient order perishing, that had his roots craved in the crush of the roman empire and in the rise of the Germans power, which took place at the same time all along the last height centuries before his birth. In the time after the crush of roman empire, which historians date at 453 A.D., we can see haw the rude and uncivilized Germans get captured by the past  roman greatness, whose remnants they could find in the Papacy. It was the Papacy indeed which inherited, though transforming it a religious form, the power lost by the Romans, in terms of civilization, culture, language, customs and juridical organization. We could say with Horace’s verses, changing the subject,  “Roma capta ferum victorem cepit”.

And this world of distribution of the powers between the Church and the Empire was ending at long.

But Dante sight was able to go very farther than all his contemporaries.

Dante’s political ideal was instead that the Pope had to have the spiritual power while the monarchy in all temporal questions. Exactly what hat to be realized after centuries from his death.

That’s why I can’t agree on what writes A.N. Wilson in his recent book “Dante in love”, where he accuses  Dante of being incoherent and instable of mind and thought till madness.

And I’m very curious instead of reading what Angelo Ruggeri writes on his answering book of Wilson’s evidence on Dante’s life and his time.

The Italian writer warns not to mistaken on confusing the Guelfs Dante belonged (actually partisans of the autonomy of the Communes against both Pope and Emperor, so said With Guelfs) with the Black Gulefs, whe exiled him for his life, being in favour of the Pope against the Emperor.

… to be continued…

Dante and his time

Since 1800, a book a year has been edited, only in  English language, on Dante's masterpiece "The Divine Comedy",  which shows the great interest English culture has reserved to the "Supreme Italian Poet".

Is not a case that Dante Alighieri is enumerated between the six best poets of any time in the mondial literature.

Recently one more book has been published on the matter: Dante in love by A.N. Wilson.

Despite his title, it's not a book neither on Gemma Donati's love affairs, nor on Beatrice's. His right title could have been "Dante and his time", 'cause it's reckoned by his same author that the book deals with the social and political life in Florence during the poet's life (1265-1321).

May be that's the main reason why the book has had conflictual and opposite reviews by English critic and reviers.

As matter of fact while the Telegraph (both Daily and Sunday's) and the Times have expressed good opinions on the last Wilson's work, other papers, like The Observer and The Guardian show perplexities and douts on the reaching of his purposes and objectives by the book.

In Italy Angelo Ruggeri, a well known writer, very fond on classical studies, is working on Dante in love book's review.

Angelo Ruggeri believes that Wilson's Dante in love is well documented and solidly founded (as English, he affirms, have a great tradition on Dante's studies). He therefore underlines, according to Wilson's convictions,  the contradictions between  Dante's theories and his life, mostly because the Poet, while beloging to the Guelf's Party (thus being loyal to the roman Pope), nevertheless he vowed and wished the coming of an Universalistic  Empire (under the German power) able to gather and include old the states and all the world since then known.

He shares Wilson's statements quoting his book at page 118:

“His treatise written in exile, when he had changed his mind about being a papalist Guelf and became an ardente supporter of a universal monarchy, would strike many modern readers as bizarre and the open letters he wrote to the Emperor Henry VII would strike most dispassionate readers as deranged”.

Angelo Ruggeri gives evidence that Wilson's statement on Dante's incoherence and madness (of course in his political behaviour) was rightly confirmed by the judgement that Roman Church gave on Dante's treaty book  "The Monarchy".

But Angelo Ruggeri, at a certain point, leaves the Wilson's path and chooses his own ground:

" And if we  suppose "- asks the italian writer - "that Dante was neither Guelf nor Ghibeline, just wanting to be a mere and pure republican against both the papalist and the foreigner imperialists besieging Florence at the same time?"

... to be continued...