Edoardo Sanguineti, Italy

Por: Edoardo Sanguineti

Ballad of the War

To Gian Carlo Binelli

where are the Vikings and the Aztecs
and the men and women of Cro-Magnon?
where are the old Atlantis and the new ones,
the Great Door and the Invincible Armada,
the Salic Law and the Sybylline Books,
Pepin the Short and Ivan the Terrible?
everything is over, in bits and morsels
in the morbid jaws of time:
here, what is not resolved by a war
another war at once provides a remedy:

where are the Triples and the Quadruples,
the Belle Époque and the Iron Guards?
where are Tom Mix and Tom Pouce,
the Celestial Empire, the Zeppelin, the New Deal,
the Orient Express, the electroshock, situationism,
the twist, the OAS, the Humbert of Savoy hairdo?
everything is over, in bits and morsels
in the full belly of history:
here, if something is not concluded by a war,
another war at once provides a remedy:

oh, where are you, wars of pigs and roses,
wars of secession and succession?
oh, where are you, holy and cold wars,
thirty, a hundred years wars
six days and seven weeks wars,
you, great swift wars without end?
you are all over, in bits and morsels
within the nothingness of nothingness of all nothingness:
here, if a war is not settled by a peace
another peace will at once have another war

princes, presidents, eminent potent privileged military,
builders demanders of indecent monuments,
wars against wars is the war to go,
class struggle is the war to do:

Edoardo Sanguineti was born in Geneva, Italy, in 1930, died in the same city in May 2010. A poet, novelist and essayist, he received a degree in Letters from the University of Turin, where he taught Italian Literature; later he taught this same subject in Salerno and Geneva, where he currently lives. Poetic work: Laborintus, 1956; Opus metricum, 1960; Triperuno, 1964; Wirrwarr, 1972; Catamerone, 1974; Postkarten, 1978; Stracciafoglio, 1980; Scartabello, 1981; Segnalibro-Poesie, 1982; Novissimum Testamentum, 1986; Bisbidis, 1987; Senzatitolo, 1992; and Corollario, 1997, among others. He occupies an important place in the generation of Italian writers of what is known as the Grupo 63, a neo-avant-guardist movement, bellicose and polemical which also included the participation of Umberto Eco, Giorgio Manganelli and Nanni Ballestrini, among others. He has written works for the theater and has translated some classics (Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides and Seneca).