Unfold the map of the world and trace
a kaleidoscopic boot-shaped country
rising from the waters lavished by Atlantic
in a multicultural basin at the heart
of a flat globe. The Mediterranean birthed
by the Zanclean deluge, witness of myriad
exoduses intertwining genes to encompass
peninsular cradles of early civilisations,
a medley of ethnicities trading goods
discoveries and ideas on sailing caravels.
Two thousand years later the remnants of
the Roman Empire vote, the democracy
they had co-founded two thousand years
before, on philosophies of justice, equality
and human rights. Power to the people,
lost in the process of history making,
populaces disillusioned and frustrated
at millenary successions of failed rulings
corroborated by corruption and personal
greed of those chosen to represent them.
Today Italians vote anti-establishment
thereby at long last rejecting ideologies
of the past, too old to bare credibility
electing a party set outside the box,
no left right nor centre, victory of populism,
communism and capitalism burned
at stake for their crippling sins albeit
international cold-war renaissance attempts.
Marking the end of the twentieth century
the twenty-first bets on the refreshing breezes
of new tantalising illusions, cuts to public debt,
income of citizenship, youth employment,
tax reductions campaigned to allegedly increase
family spending, for whatever we do we are
all bound by a unique reigning doctrine under
the unified global empire, of consumerism
measuring our worth.
[Featured painting: Map of Italy Corsica and Sardinia by Ignazio Dante, 1582 – The Gallery of Maps, Vatican Museums]