"Imperversa, imperversa, prima che sia troppo tardi"

("Rage, rage, while there's still time")

A.M. Ripellino in "Autunnale barocco"

ABSTRACT: A collection of documents on the radicals' libertarian antifascism: to recognize fascism means to understand what it has been and above all what it can be. Apparent antifascism too often hides a complicity with those who represented the true continuity with fascism, the reprise of laws and methods typical of that regime. (" WE AND THE FASCISTS", The radicals' libertarian antifascism, edited by Valter Vecellio, preface by Giuseppe Rippa - Quaderni Radicali/1, November 1980)

Let us leave a trace of the things that have happened.

Because all archives shall be burned.

A sheet of paper under a stone will suffice.

The first wind of March will blow it away to the country.

I had just returned from Vienna.

The Paduan plains were fermenting

loaded with rubble and blood.

Two seas pushed against it behind the tail of a great stream

that lied.

At this point the book of ancient knowledge

fell into my hands

on page eighty I read that in dark times man, man, man

must make a light

even with the fire of a single word.

These are years when they kidnap men and sell them like goods.

The slave dealers today are cowards and dark.

Don't they have ships, don't they have flags?

They are no pirates.

The African negroes were better off in centuries past. Past.

Poetry too, kidnapped and sold, is merchandise.

Awakened by the motor scrapers the dead escape to the hills.

It is the exact time in history when you have to choose and make a stand.

The high kilns caulked by lights sweep away the snow.

A maddened midge cuts across the leaking smoke.

It seems helpless though it's flown for a century.

Anyone living for the first time wants to know the world.

In an attic corner

there was before the flood, a half-truth hidden

among the portraits of a father and the letters of people who no longer have the heart.

Look, ask, interrogate, desire,

Wait, call, offer, doubt.

Violence has always waged the wars

then the these wars have been possessed by the violence of violence.

The violence of the Commune created the Commune,

but a greater violence unmade the Commune.

This violence pursued the Commune

even into the cracks in the walls.

Is it right to die only for the grandeur of history?

Violence is a heap of bones

to be buried.

By now we are in the Twenty First Century.

What do you seek among the high grass?

I follow the grass snake that gives no wine

but emits clarinet cries as it wanders under the ultimate sun.

Following the grass snake I hope to reach the stream

look at the stream

cross the wood

reach the walled city

conquer the city

beat down the walls.

I want there to be one last spring

I want to fix with my Polaroid words

this face of the earth.

When power calls, poetry does not answer.

But when the end is (possible) death

the cithara of the trees and the earth's flash of lightning

cry, it does not fear and accepts the war.

Because words are not fragile

not even in a time of oppression.

("La Città Futura", May 10, 1978)