Valentino Zeichen
Poesie (1963-2014)

THE REVIEW

From serendipity I make my engine of life and during the journey, the curious and fleeting gaze turns to every shy gypsy that awkwardly appears at the roadside. "Il nome rimosso" by Valentino Zeichen is one of those who, once received the coin as a token of thanks, spits on the ground and curses you.

Leaving, you think he may not be entirely wrong.

I don’t really know who Zeichen is and I hardly care to know. He must be someone who survives with an unperturbed air, feeling like a note on the margin of a page, certain of always being the last on everyone’s lips, and first of all, in time, crumples and fades away.
From what I read, he is someone who shared his childhood with war and switches tracks with the same physical dependency with which cigarettes are exchanged in times of need: Marlboro, Lucky Strike, Astor, Muratti, Rothmans, Lido, Camel.
Women struggle to be with a man who doesn’t know what he wants; if he doesn't even know where to go, he is lucky not to meet anyone and also to avoid certain scoldings.

He basically smells a lot.

Chiseling, smoothing, riveting, slotting, filing, rounding -and much more- words are said to do in these cases, only that I don't see any scratched leather or corroded slates, there are no tar and tobacco residues on the pages, no silhouettes or scraps in sight either.

Everything is candid, everything in order, even the arrogance of leaving an empty space followed by just two lines.

I feel fooled.

I hate poets and poetry books;
I hate the fact that they make you remember how to fill every space without wasting a single word.
I hate their words;
I hate them because they are liars.

That gypsy lied to me and now I want my coin back, he is the one driving and I’m in the middle of the road. He is wrong, I am right!

"If the line
of your life
on the hand
seems short,
lengthen it with a pencil
and who knows? the graft
might succeed."