February 14th Saint Valentine's Day

Getting near this very special day I would like to remember what happened in the summer of 1967: the Beatles’ song “All You Need is Love” was broadcast via satellite in 26 countries.
It has been a huge success: 350 millions people listened to “the four Liverpool's boys” singing “All You Need is Love”.
Which could be a better message for Saint Valentine’s Day?
For this occasion I’ve made love greeting cards, with lots of colors, with many hearts, ribbons, pets and secret envelopes.
And inside, some sentences from a book of poems dedicated to love “ L'amore imperfettibile” written by Anna Spissu (www.annaspissu.it).
You can find the greeting cards and the book in Milan, at “Piccoli Pensieri”, a shop of Rosy Parodi located in Soncino Street, n. 1, a side street of Torino Street (Rosy's Blog).

My sincere thanks to Gammarò for having published the book of poems, to Walter Minelli for his graphic project, to Annalisa Leonessa and Monica Calabritto for their translations into English, to Rosy Parodi and her husband for having enthusiastically believed in the project.

The place that I dream

At times we dream of a place
where we could be forever
and we trace with our hands and our eyes
an invisible course in our minds that will lead us
to a hill in its quiet
to the ocean in its vastness
or yet to the infinity of a prairie,
a steppe, a mountain in its height
or the lit and swarming life of a city.

The place that I dream,
the place where I really would like to live forever
is that small bit of your heart
where love without war runs happy
like a soldier who finally loses his way.

Monica Calabritto
Associate Professor of Italian and Comparative Literature at  Hunter College and at the Graduate Center, City University of New York
 
Annalisa Leonessa
Adjunct Professor of Italian at The George Washington University, Washington D.C.