Edda Tassi poetessa e scrittrice italiana contemporanea

Trimalcio and Romarotta

Americans walking hurried and astonished between the ruins of my enormous stone body and forelocks of clover grass, and bewitched from the smell of boneses inside me buried, and on every digging of boring scraper they jump outside like in your Hallowen: give peace yourselves, indulge to some moments of rest in your continuous race. And I will let you feel history of ladies and gentlemen of other times, whispered doubtful against westwrn wind. I gladly will be your devout minstrel, for wide roads and tight alleys; I will not ask you much money, only enormous stuff, with your company, at the tavern you prefer, and sturdy drunk to digest, to your health! In which beautiful place do you want to go today? Do you want to visit my most ancient ruins, or those most recent ones; do you want dip yorselves into vibrating weaving of blood and fauces, or white small crowns and fluttering geese?
Do you want to be good or bad in the enormous emporium of the time, where you can acquire all what you want and all what is more suitable to the fashion of this moment? I suggest, ladies and gentlemen, to dip your precious hand in the fauces of the truth, and let your limb clearly detached, because that mrs. in this latitude is a lot liar; every night more and more times she turned on the unravelled and remade bed, remade and unravelled. And if you will be skillful in telling amusing lies that stimulate the will to make fun pin on every angle of my body infinite like the ocean, you will be rewarded with good macaroni and beautiful large masks doing grimaces. This evening I want to take you to the great white square where live, hidden within the belly of the horses, the elfs of the dying century, and they don't let to anybody seeing them, because they are afraid of dying killed from the ferocity of the new times.
They walk sometimes on the wings of the golden bronze angels. They are elfs disheveled from a contrary wind, that makes them very mealncholic, they, that were so cheerful within the carriages with the true horses, robust and hairy legs, saddled rump, hidden eyes, bend in front of the restless driver with the whip, just a fistful of years ago. When the colored lights are ignited, the elfs play on the candid steps and remember the unknown names of the gentlemen who went up and down to take homage to the protecting gods, to capricious goddesses are, speaking to the volubile wind, to the trees of the Tarpea cliff. Americans! Do you see that splendid dome that seems in the day the big ass of a white mule, and in the tipsy dusk shines of thousand precious stones from East?
The elfs, before sheltering in the bowels of a died horse, gave the joyful onslaught everyday to the big dome; they saw them laughing and to reveling carefree like the fairies in front of Magnanapoli, over the black cats of the musical and succulent past. Today there are no more likeable little spirits, because there is too much noise of scrapers, hammers, jigsaws, drills that slaughter the ground of the sacred town, raising a new powder; not the sweet one of the corporal end, our good, old Etruscan light that rooms on from the hell in pleased sunny middays, up until the seven hills, but the light of the null without death, totally without nature. In the middle of this powder sky the human beings of the dark times move, the ones that will die forever, freeing a cloud of ground. Someone says that it's your guilt is, Americans, but an evolution so awkward of the blood to the brain is not imputable only to your wizards fin du sičcle.
It's guilt of lovings elfs who don't love anymore to hiddenly enter to alleys and courtyards to spy on daily history of the human beings, judging them without knowing anything of them. The strange people of disappointed elfs possessed an energy that has gone dispersed with happening of the diggings of Romarotta. In the beginning the elfs plugged their ears, their eyes and their nose each other; then they started to speak each other with proverbs, to get nauseated for triffles, decree on the end of the Eternal City and on the fact that without them the forfeiture of every thing would have accelerated its steps. There was a period of transition of age in the last century in which Maia, a kind of hermaphroditical elf native from a Latin small village, used to guide his followers to the entrance of Magnanapoli Street, close to Ulpia restaurant. He began to sing strange jinx refrains, addressed to the aliens who tasted in the open air over the ruins delicious foods of the Roman kitchen.
"The vixen says to its sons: once throstles, once crickets, Remember that soon or late it will be useful to you" screamed in chorus the Latin elfs, scattering on the paved floor around to the ruins a yellowish the amber liquid incense, that amassed human beings and things, animals and chimeras. And the delicious foods became poison, and the thoughts of the diners were dyed of gloomy madness. "Fortunate earth of heroes between sky and sky, how are you turning yourself? Why do you let that every beautiful and lovely gesture of challenge between life and death falls in the sewers?" sang Maia with the army of the rebel elfs, in the nocturnal ring a round the rosey under the troubled moon. Americans that today settle down to take a walk between stinking refusals and tolerant Japaneses. You had to see how much energy emanated from that landed on the moon dance!
It seemed that it was still possible to stop the decline of the eternal beauty and keep it untouched to let you admire it, to abduct you in the magical recall of the temples erected to the Gods of the invisibile planet. In those times special rituals were celebrated still, invoking now the one now the other more visible constellation in sky, mentioning it as Queen of the night, until the light came from the sea to turn white the fortune and glory dreams. In the day the great jobs of havoc of the poor eternal city began again. After the Jubilee of end of millenium, at the northern entrance the new registration as 'Romarotta' was put, and such it remained until the decline of today, well representing what happened before the time in which the elfs sheltered within the body of the statues, or under the tail of the horses. It was ordered that in sight of the huge religious event the face of the things was changed, and this happened, but in bad way.
It was ordered to move the horrible statue of Campo de' Fiori in an angle of Farnese Square, and happened that the laborers carried it to the garden of Villa Borghese, between people at snack, drinks and small dogs pissing. It was attempted to cover better the indecent parts of the satyr of Barberini Square, and a doubled opposite erotic effect was obtained, indecent. They had to stick some copies of the ecstasy by Bernini in the angles of the main squares of Rome, and it was discovered that the saint was a male, a kind of Saint Sebastian dressed like a nun, with the dress shortened from an expert taylor. They were in many to suspect that behind these phenomena there was a precise design of disfigurement of sinful symbols or other not simple errors of laborers who stole some smaller statue to resell them to black market.
Sometimes the effect was the exact contrary of the disfigurement like in the case of dredges, flies, big fishes and lions, that in the new positioning became more good, figuring like protectors of little squares and garden. There was a special team of blacksmiths and stonecutters to which it was ordered to weirdly knit together some bronze statues representing several emperors of Rome, solemn, in dare settings. It turned out into a kind of historical orgy, obscene and perverse position, horrible at sight. The nuns, passing, fixed the veil and lowered the look embarrassed, while the priests lost their eyes, in the scientific scope to understand if that dishonor were due to the necessity to create space for the enormous masses in arrival, or to the sick fantasy of the master-welder in an excited moment.
It was humiliating for those great warlords to knit the hand raised in sign of leadership to the ass of a colleague who went to stay bent over others two stuck like two sardines to his horse. What the spectators noticed it was only a geometric game situated in their mind, or a weird combination of matter due to the case. Statues were moved, but also trees, columns and Fountains, never knowing who ordered it and why. They waked up in the morning that already it had been made everything in flit, and the goodnight to the bucket. They carried the trees outside the city outside transplanted them where il could happen. The five palms of Piazza di Spagna were found again without warning close to the poplars and the chestnuts coming from where goodness only knows and were suddenly dry, dejected, depressed, accustomed to the praises of Pan and children in love.
The most curious movements affected the columns and the Fountains, true block of stone and water, in the mystic removal to Vatican. The Fontanas like small basins were put on one over the other like a battery of dark plates for soup. The columns were tied to panels with iron cables like asparagus grown too much or celery. The great empty space was created as better as they can. It was like an enormous clear rubber ring, perforate from the hands of a child, until that they didn't strain over like fusing chocolate, tons of tar and bitumen that never did not dry, because the jobs were made in autumn, not much propitious season and with thick rain.
The population was forced for many days to remain plugged in house, with rationed provisions and water like during the war. Finally it was Romarotta, that wasted time among joyful customers. leading them to guest houses and taverns to give refreshment to the tired limbs after a long travel. A made-up Rome, broken as you see, that eats and drinks and shits, that throws everything from the window over the head of the aliens of which it has fear, knowing that it is the master. To your health!

Prose

Poetry

Trimalcio and Romarotta