Carrying Along That Secret
Gradma singing her passionate Neapolitan songs
from a balcony adorned with scarlet roses...her deep voice
not a soprano's, but delightful and expressed in humaneness;
her long golden hair brushed by the summer's aromatic breeze,
to spark a new passion in her lively blue eyes!
And has she ever told anyone about
carrying along that secret?
When grandpa left Italy, in clandestine disguise,
for a long, hopeful jeouney to America in the late thirties,
grandma sacrificed and suffered much; and when the Nazis
invaded the peaceful town of Baiano,
grandma made trips to the small mill in Arciano,
to grind grain and make her delicious bread:
encountering many dangers and fears ahead...
making her the heroine History won't recognize!
Have the historians overlooked her incredible courage,
and let her carry along that secret?
Women and young ladies, including grandma, adored
the handsome and fearless man Mussolini,
who resuscitated the old concept of the Roman Empire with evil ways...
manipulating the puppet' hands of the loyal Fascisti;
woe to me, if I had lived and rebelled in those dreadful days:
I would have been imprisoned and possibly been killed!
Out of grief and anger, I speak against
every injustice and not carry along that secret!
My uncle, Stefano, was taken to England by the British
as a prisoner of war...a coerced man so torn;
and Emma a kind-hearted English woman ,
and a lovely nurse with an impeccable humanity,
visited him often and brought him a home-cooked dish;
someting wonderful could have bloomed between them...
but all records and details have been lost instead,
and mine rely entirely on faded pictured filled with memory!
What unthinkable steps, the dictators of this earth take, to gain
their day in an unpromising sun: suddenly power and pride...gone;
Hitler's land devastated by the armies of justice...
with no shot-down bodies falling into self-dug ditches!
Powerful people could have prevented this inhumane slaughter with haste,
but silently watched them die... carrying along that secret!
Copyright © Andrew Crisci | Year Posted 2007
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