An Italian Elegy

Boys and Their Kites in the 1930s

Dreams, aspirations, joy of living,
love for nature, freedom;
this was all a kite meant, a long time ago,
maybe fifty or sixty years ago.

Home-made kites
A reed stolen from the vegetabIe garden,
yes, the one mother used to support her tomatoes,
Cut exactly in half with a kitchen knife.
A handful of flour and a little water, and the glue was ready.
Scissors, and brilliant blue and yellow paper
bought at the store just down the road.
A lovely blue kite, with a long tail, yellow and blue rings for wings.

Up high
With quickened heartbeat, and eyes shining
from the anxious joy of the first flight,
running fast in the open field behind the house,
running, running through the wind of our youth,
watching our kite fly higher and higher,
united to us by a long piece of unwinding string,
high lip against the sun.
Indescribable joy!
And how proud my little friends Renzo and Mimma,
assistants during the construction of my blue and yellow dream.
Proud, because the kite remained up there, firmly against the sun,
proud, because I was the best during the summer kite competitions,
The best in creating colorful dreams.

Freedom is fantasy.
How much joy to see the kite go up into the sky,
just like the freedom of the children in those times.
Ours was still a free infantile society because modest,
in which fantasy still remained the queen of our lives.
And kites, kites constructed by us, were the symbol of our freedom;
and if they were perfectly made,
they would have remained firmly up there in the blue sky.
Firm just like our world of free youth,
still free from the schemes subtly imposed.

And today?
Today an invitation:
Let's try, let's force ourselves to still be free,
free to be happy, to lift up our hopes, high up there in the sky.

Kites small or large
modest or important
it does not matter,
the only thing that matters is that they are still the visible expressions
of the aspirations of each of us;

to dream
to live
to feel free.

because a kite is not only a game!

But freedom
Fantasy
Joy of living