Auguri!

Walking to the newsagent for the papers and then to the bar for a coffee is a progression of "auguri!"s at the moment. Yesterday an elderly chap auguried and then said, "wait there, back in a moment'', and re-entered his house. He came back with a discreet, bound fascicle, privately printed, of his poems.

Presenting them formally to Mr HG (whom he had known since birth) he said:

"I want you to have these. As you know I am self taught. After the Quinta (the school leaving certificate at the end of elementary school after five years of formal obligatory education), of course I went to work. But I have written poetry always."

No, they are not the poems of a William Blake; but in their existence they are a tribute to the human spirit and to the Italian education system. In the five brief years of morning school in which his Maestra had drummed reading, writing, calculation and as much history, geography and general Italian culture as could be fitted round the edges, four hours a day, six days a week, he had learned enough poetry by heart for declamation in class, and a grasp of the formal structures of his language, not to speak of a life long passion for words and their expressive capacities, to be a poet. And the confidence in a piece of work well turned out and meeting the criteria is not to be ignored. We may no longer commit to rhymes and feet, but those who do, commit, too, to a small perfection.