Ivan Pozzoni
I could try to tell you
with the sound of my keyboard
how Baasima died of leprosy
without ever reaching the border,
or how the Armenian Meroujan
under a flutter of half-moons
felt the air in his eyes vanish
thrown into a mass grave;
Charlee, who moved to Brisbane
in search of a better world,
ends the journey
in the mouth of an alligator,
or Aurelio, named Bruna
who, after eight months in hospital
died of AIDS contracted
to hit a ring road.
Nobody will remember Yehoudith,
her lips carmine red,
erased by drinking toxic poisons
in an extermination camp,
or Eerikki, with his red beard,
defeated by the turbulence of the waves,
who sleeps, scoured by orcas,
on the bottom of some sea;
the head of Sandrine, Duchess
of Burgundy heard the rumour of the feast
as it fell from the blade of a guillotine
into a basket
and Daisuke, modern samurai,
counted the revolutions of a plane’s engine
transhumanizing a kamikaze gesture into harakiri.
I could go on and on
in the stifling heat of a summer night
how Iris and Anthia, deformed Spartan children
were abandoned,
or how Deendayal died of deprivation
attributable to the single crime
of living the life of an outcast
without ever having rebelled;
Ituha, an Indian girl,
threatened with a knife,
who ends up dancing with Manitou
in the anteroom of a brothel
and Luther, born in Lancashire
freed from the profession of beggar
and forced to die by His Britannic Majesty
in the coal mines.
Who will remember Itzayana
and her family massacred
in a village on the outskirts of Mexico
by Carranza’s retreating army,
and what of Idris, the African rebel,
stunned by shocks and burns
while untamed by colonial domination,
he tried to steal an ammunition truck;
Shahdi flew high into the sky
above the flagpoles of the Green Revolution,
landing in Tehran with his wings torn apart
by a cannon shot,
and Tikhomir, a Chechen bricklayer,
that fell among the indifferent faces
to the ground from the roof of Lenin’s Mausoleum,
without comment.
From objects of narrative
fractured into fragments of non-existence
transmits distant sounds
of resistance.
Ivan Pozzoni, from Monza, is a pioneer of Law and Literature studies in Italy and an extensive author on Italian philosophy, ancient ethics, and legal theory. Between 2007 and 2018, he published numerous works, including Underground, Riserva Indiana, Versi Introversi, Carmina non dant damen, and The Invective Disease. Pozzoni founded and directed the literary magazines Il Guastatore and L’Arrivista and serves as editor of the international philosophical journal Información Filosófica. Known for founding the NéoN-avant-garde movement, he authored an anti-manifesto and is featured in major university manuals and critical anthologies. His works, translated into French, English, and Spanish, have earned him critical acclaim, including the prestigious Raduga Award. In 2024, he reentered Italy’s art scene by establishing the NSEAE Kolektivne (New Socio/Ethno/Aesthetic Anthropology).
