Near the Docks

Near the old docks in Genoa where old dwellings stand close together making streets narrow and families live is lived rather noisily, where women hang laundry to dry on small terraces or on window ledges. Sometimes when several street merges, the open space is called a plaza, where fruit seller, tobacconist, and cafe where men sit and smoke, drink red wine, and argue about politics, in a gruff manner. When the crew on his ship took a taxi up to Gramsci Street to seek the bright light, he walked to his cafe, lit a cigarette drank good wine, ate bologna or ricotta or Gorgonzola and salami The people accept him sitting there, because even if Italians drink they are not drunks falling about being aggressive as people from Nordic countries tend to be. On a tall wall, a placard, partly torn depicting the face of a politician, they said he had been a good man for the locals and looked after his friends and family like an Italian man should. When the war ended and since he was on the losing side, he fled, they thought he was in Argentina, he was of no interest anymore, better not to talk about him. This sentiment is quite true, at one point we must look to the future and forgive those, who thought they had done the best for their country but it turned out they had failed miserably