Ernesto Ragazzoni, the improper poet

“There are those who cut and sew breeches, / those who train lions in cages, / those who go in search of snails, / I make holes in the sand”, He wrote Ernesto Ragazzoni, a man of the late nineteenth century, who died on the threshold of a complex time, “where the gaze does not see the rostrum / blackthorn, and the foot is lost among the tall tufts”. Literature outsider. “As for me, a humble / light I am, / trembling, gas”. A tavern boy, ironic and brilliant in conversation, and Gascon in melancholy. “And it is like a full moon albor / for the columns of a cathedral; / a muted light, where its energy / loses all hue, and seems almost opal ”. And we often return to him, as we do with dear places, “… something like the home / of a Beauty in the Woods, or the refuge / of some ancient friar who is a bit of a sorcerer”.