In this suspended time we take the opportunity to tell you about a Milan full of poetry. Not only that of the verses of great poets, but also that of its most defiladed and unexpected corners. A few days ago, on the first day of Spring, March 21, the International Day of Poetry was also celebrated. This is no accident.
Like Nanni Moretti in the first episode of Caro Diario, we also hop into the saddle of a Vespa to embark on a journey, real and imaginary, through the streets and neighborhoods of a springtime, semi-deserted Milan of art.
The poetic face of Milan begins here
It is not the summer, August Milan, empty of Milanese and tourists. It is a Milan still clutched by the invisible cage of a new lockdown, which, however, also because of this, in the days of the Easter holidays, is free to reveal to the world the discreet beauty of its courtyards, its atriums, its silent and less industrious atmospheres than usual, letting itself be leafed through just like a compelling novel, enchanting us just like a poem.
Discovering this Milanese magic, as our Vespa rides caressed by a crisp April wind, we meet along the haphazard Via Magolfa, just a few steps from the already poetic Naviglio Pavese, today’s most beloved poetess, Alda Merini, born on the very day of Spring and on the day of Poetry, March 21 precisely. She who ardently loved Milan, in whose verses echo passion and love. Among her most beautiful poems we are reminded of those short lines in which she expresses an insatiable need for silence. When words represent an annoying noise, distracting the gaze and thought, then silence becomes pure poetry.
“I need silence.
I go out and on the street the usual people
Who know my small talk
Bewildered by my quick good morning
Who knows, maybe they think I’m in a hurry.”
(from Ho bisogno di silenzio – Alda Merini)
These verses accompany our wandering. It is fascinating to imagine the poet right there, near the renovated House-Museum, suggesting that we reclaim, inside and out, our own space and time, too often caught up in that frenetic all-Milanese rhythm that almost alienates us. Thus, in the morning calm, we could stroll along his beloved Navigli, beautiful with those sunny courtyards , those colorful railing houses, those “withered washerwomen on the body of the Naviglio.”
Another silence, less sublime but still filled with poetry, envelops these days the places of leisure and entertainment, such as certain suburban Milanese amusement parks. The rides still and dusty, the laughter absent. No children’s voices, no cotton candy, no ice cream, no candy. A stillness that hurts today. But these places will reopen and this silence will once again succumb to the screams and new laughter of young and old, less graceful of course, but alive!
It will be no coincidence that a few days after Alda Merini’s birthday, on March 25, we also celebrated Dantedì, to commemorate the seventh centenary of Dante Alighieri’s death, on the day that marks the beginning of that poetic journey of his into the afterlife.
In Milan the supreme poet, in all probability, exiled from Florence, did not even pass through, but the city celebrates him through small tributes hidden or unknown to most. Our Vespa thus takes us back to the heart of the city, to the silent Cortile degli Spiriti Magni of the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, where Dante’s statue stands haughtily in the company of other Greats from all over Europe. It would be to be hoped that in the year of this universal celebration of eternal poetry and humanity, the streets of Milan’s historic center would also be illuminated by artistic installations as in Ravenna, where the light makes Dante’s endecasyllables and his sublime verses shine, almost like warnings. A widespread Comedy, one would say!
Our journey continues. More stops, more neighborhoods, more poetry. These places collect a lifetime, but today they barely let us perceive what they usually represent. They seem to have lost their souls, but they reveal all the poetry and all the surprise they hold within. Thus are Zona Tortona, the Ticinese Quarter,Isola, which reveal to those who pass through them their countless works of street art, and Bovisa, immortalized the latter by the black-and-white shots of Milanese photographer Marco Merati’s reportage. Sharp, lucid images that reflect the silence of a surreal, almost metaphysical Milan during the pandemic.
This is the poetry of Milan, everywhere you turn, today and always. Now Milan is just standing still, but ready to soon welcome back crowds of Milanese and tourists, on Vespas, on streetcars, on foot, on bicycles, on boats. It is just waiting to open its doors wide to its citizens, to unknown passersby, to new loves, to new poems.
On that day we will also return to taste the Easter savory pie, the one from the typical Lombard tradition, without a mask, chatting and sipping a glass of wine, in an authentic Easter picnic, sitting perhaps in the shade of one of the many trees that will populate the city.
Isn’t their green embrace in itself a touch of poetry?
Olivia Campanile
Don’t miss Neiade Tour & Events’ initiatives to discover the poetry and neighborhoods of Milan!
Contemporary art galleries in Milan’s neighborhoods.
Milan city of water and the reopening of the canals
On the Navigli between courtyards and railing houses
