Bossi’s Christmas greetings
Umberto Bossi is back, this time as a poet, for Christmas 2020 greetings. The article by Paola Sacchi
Umberto Bossi is back, this time as a poet, for Christmas 2020 greetings. The Senatùr, who never ceases to surprise with his histrionic verve, does so with the usual postcard, now in its twenty-fifth edition. It is a tribute to the world of the elderly in the verses of one of his poems in Lombard and with a watercolor also by the unknown and valiant "Po Valley painter". A positive homage of life to all the elderly, this year so hard hit by the pandemic.
In the twenty-fifth edition of the Christmas card, made to prepare ad hoc, he uses one of his poems in the Lombard language that is part of the series of poems he composed in the late 70s, early 80s. It was when the political idea matured in him, in that historical period in which the agricultural world was set aside by the industrial one.
The poem is "Na Mameta (A Grandmother)". The story of an elderly woman who one day manages to escape from the hospice to go and see her hometown and Lake Varese from afar. Fragment of the life of a local character tied to his roots when only the Lombard dialect was spoken.
The usual Christmas card – which the artist himself had painted for twenty-five years – is a watercolor on paper, printed and sent to the militants, to the institutional and political world.
With the poem and the painting, the phrase written in his own hand: "Merry Christmas 2020 to all the grandmothers of the world". Signed: Umberto Bossi. Here, the original text that Start reports in full version.
"NA MAMETA
Na mameta e dre a makes a majon
Par ul naudin, ca la ved
Do voelt a an.
And it knows strasisan cun wool
Anca i regord di so fioeu
From la so vita e dul so om
Suteraa in d'un paeš
Par le insci luntan.
The and who at the tri an vegioni.
A di ca e riusii a scapa foeura
Dul cancel,
He crosses it u stradun
And it has poduu varda gio in
From the val.
In the end, dopu ul lach,
Gh'e ul so paeš,
I know gent
And I know it from the memory,
I know radis
And ul sentiment ".
Actually, he has always been a poet, the so-called “Gemonio's barbarian”, who recites the verses of Giacomo Leopardi from memory. As a young man Bossi, as is told in a beautiful biography, he slept in the same room with his brother, whom he did not make to fall asleep because of the light on necessary for his nocturnal readings. Bossi, placing the tragedy of the “elderly” at the center of his wishes, once again becomes an original interpreter and extraordinary communicator of the feelings of the man in the street. To which he, the Senatùr, was the first to give a voice by changing political communication. Which it still holds the copyright to.
Bossi has not yet returned to Rome, after his second illness a year and a half ago. But the Senatùr is there in Gemonio, from where he continues to follow politics. Of course now in times of Covid it does not come down to Rome as a precaution. But he is always ready to do so, to exercise – after he will be set up by the party he himself founded, the Northern League, or the foundations of today's National League, of which he is still President for life – his right and duty as a parliamentarian. .
With the 2018 elections Bossi, after many years in Montecitorio, returned to Palazzo Madama as the Senatùr, with whom he began his parliamentary commitment in 1987. In an interview with Lanfranco Palazzolo, historical journalist of Radio Radicale , he explained the meaning of his being also a poet. Radio Radicale publishes all the poems. With the “Tera” at the top, that is the land of his Lombardy, of the first massive industrializations where the sirens of the factories clashed with the nature of men, women and fields. Bossi left-wing ecologist? No, that is not the true political figure of Gemonio's man, still said today by many Northern League militants, who always write to him, "the Chief". And so still called in the high ranks of Via Bellerio.
“Umberto, come back soon, we have never forgotten you, you are always in our thoughts”, they tell him. Bossi is the man of independence, who coined the slogan "Rome thieves" not against the capital as such but against the system of central power, of the bureaucracy that "thus also massacred the South". This he told the reporter in the House in an informal interview two evenings before the "old lion" got sick again. And, as for "sovereignty", it is enough to listen to his speech in Venice, September 1996, on the day of the so-called proclamation of the republic of "Padania", to understand that the various Steve Bannons make a little whisper to the "Boss". Secession, how did the mainstream press dismiss it? No. Independence, autonomy of peoples, in Europe, this was what the Senatùr was talking about. Which many years later he revealed to the chronicler: "I stirred up the secession to obtain the Devolution". That is that Federalism whose decrees have yet to be implemented, its real, great problem. Firm principles and politics. Like it or not, this is the Senatùr.
Merry Christmas also to "Umberto", the "Boss", the man of Gemonio, which today's politics misses. But that we are sure to find again in parliament soon. From his "Tera" in Rome. As he has always done to carry forward, genuinely, even at the government level (he was also the Minister of Reforms for Federalism in the last Berlusconi government) the demands of his people.
Here is the Italian translation of the poem-wish for Christmas 2020.
“A GRANNY
A granny is making a sweater
for the grandson, who sees
twice a year.
And they wear out with wool
also the memories of his children,
of her life and her husband
buried in a country
so far for her.
He's been here at the hospice for three years.
One day, she managed to escape
outside the gate,
crossed the main road
and he could look down
in the valley.
After all, after the lake,
there is his country,
its people.
And its streets of memory
its roots
and mental integrity ".
A positive message of life. By Umberto Bossi.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/gli-auguri-di-natale-di-bossi/ on Thu, 17 Dec 2020 08:45:35 +0000.