Piangi, piangi che…/ Go on, cry…by Edoardo Sanguineti

Piangi, piangi che…

Edoardo Sanguineti

Piangi piangi, che ti compero una lunga spada blu di plastica, un frigorifero Bosch in miniatura, un salvadanaio di terracotta, un quaderno con tredici righe, un’azione della Montecatini:

piangi piangi, che ti compero una piccola maschera antigas, un flacone di sciroppo ricostituente ,un robot, un catechismo con illustrazioni a colori, una carta geografica con bandiere vittoriose:

piangi piangi, che ti compero un grosso capidoglio di gomma piuma, un albero di Natale, un pirata con una gamba di legno, un coltello a serramanico, una bella scheggia di una bella bomba a mano:

piangi piangi, che ti compero tanti francobolli dell’Algeria francese, tanti succhi di frutta, tante teste di legno, tante teste di moro, tante teste di morto:

oh ridi ridi, che ti compero un fratellino: che così tu lo chiami per nome: che così tu lo chiami Michele:

Go on, cry …

Edoardo Sanguineti

Go on, cry, and I’ll buy you a long blue plastic sword, a mini Bosch fridge, a terracotta piggybank, a notebook with thirteen lines, and a share in Montecatini:

go on, cry, and I’ll buy you a small gas mask, a bottle of energizer, a robot, a textbook with coloured illustrations, a map with victorious flags:

go on, cry, and I’ll buy you a huge whale made out of foam rubber, a Christmas tree, a pirate with a peg leg, a switchblade, some lovely shrapnel from a lovely hand bomb:

go on, cry, and I’ll buy you lots of stamps from Colonial Algeria, lots of fruit juice, lots of block heads, lots of Moor’s heads, lots of dead heads:

oh go on, laugh, and I’ll buy you a baby brother: so you can call him by his name: so you can call him Michele.

Edoardo Sanguineti was born in Genova in 1930. He is the maximum exponent of the Neo-avantgarde movement, which is characterized by the rejection of all traditional literary forms, and the conviction that poetic language must reflect the chaos in the world. The poem is from the collection Triperuno (1964). It unmasks the grave social condition that we are living today: everything has a price and can be bought, whether it be the name brand shoes made by children in a third world country, nature in the shape of a giant foam rubber whale, a country we colonize, a people we destroy, and our empathy. A father talks to his son, he tries to buy his happiness with a seemingly haphazard list of objects. The last verse seems to shed a ray of hope: new life. Michele is the name of the poet’s third child.

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