To Patrizia
In Chiasso, in a ho-hum
courtyard at the close
of the fifties, children
make a game of scaling
the fences to beat rugs—
a puff of metal and grass.
Eternal, the afternoon. Relentless,
the sheep-in-clouds sky.
Relentless, the games.
They climb up and hook
their knees over the crossbeam,
hanging head down, arms dangling,
and in their irrepressible
little voices cry out to the world,
“We’re monkeys!
Beautiful brown apes, orango-tangos,
tiny monkeys doing the ‘Petàce’!”
Then they laugh in the late postwar period.