To whom would you dedicate the stage of the Giro D’Italia at Prati di Tivo? For us Marco Pantani and Gianni Mura. Two Masters, national rock heroes.
And go, little fist of bones, goldfinch,
Pantadattilo, Fossilo, Pirata, pedal your destiny
With a tight bandana, or a bald head that shines in the morning sun
as soon as the road straightened out.
Fragile like a Lalique vase,
hard as granite. Pantastique.
And go. Plateau de Beille in the sun
Galibier under water, black sky.
Only those who were there find the words
For this cold hell, almost zero.
You want it there wherever you want it
What you can. And you wanted, it’s true,
you flew, you flew the Tour.
Now it’s all yours. Oh, the beautiful days.
Now that it’s over, we’re tired
(you perhaps more than us) and a little broken.
Luciano Pezzi, Bianchi bicycle:
how many memories pass through the pieces.
Gentle drift starting from the hips
of the mountain that you will tear to pieces.
Pieces of heart blowing up
O Fossil from the Quaternary era.
Or fossil from the Mesozoic era
so good at piercing the present
shall we play the Pathetica or the Eroica?
My Romagna, to make people dance?
You prefer to talk about the stoic
your will, of those who were in nothing,
just a handful of bones and pain
with a future without more heat?
A lot can be said, bird-man
on the clear day of your victory,
tell you you’re good you’re strong you’re beautiful
tell you that you have made history.
Pan Pan Pantani like a refrain
Suspended between applause and memory,
suspended between history and legend.
Long wait, tremendous will.
The hard desire to last
(and this is Eluard, one of my poets)
that’s what made you rise
like a huge cake. More secrets
I don’t see any or look for them.
Your lightning among the fir trees is enough for me,
tarantolato with agile relationship,
hard as granite yet fragile.
Leblanc should make you a monument:
you didn’t sweep the Tour, you saved it
from shit and pollution
of ultra-luxury or cheap doping,
you gave him back honor and feeling,
it was dirty and you polished it.
A Tour with all the good and all the bad.
And good wins with the pedal strokes.
A Tour with all the bad and all the good
after the pink of the Giro, crocus colour
which already warmed the blood on Friday
and renewed the desire for fire.
Set off. What Tour? How’s it going?
But no, it would have been too little.
A tour with the colors of the fresco
a human, large, gigantic Tour.
You see? Gimondi, Bartali, Martini
they are moved, those old boys.
Gaul and Van Impe are two children
Smiling. And all because you sweep
the champions of a month, the gravediggers
of cycling dosed in drops, in spurts.
Marco, my Fossil, forever friend
of those who loved great ancient cycling.
Ancient does not mean dead, extinct
or hidden in the attic, buried.
You are ancient, you are as old as the wind
that comes and goes, from the sea to the pergola.
If you’re new, it’s in the flash of a moment
in which you balance the present with the past.
And you know it, hope of the lame,
you say Pantani and Coppi comes to mind.
Maybe it bores you, too many people have told you that
and there is no comparison in stride.
Yours is a firecracker, all tears and explosions,
His expanse, long serenade.
What’s the same is that they cause lumps,
they wake up the sleeping mountain
and they pin their opponents’ legs.
You are generous, they are too stingy.
They are too modern, programmed,
with heart rate monitor and threshold
while the ancients unleashed
only by courage and desire.
Marco, you are the comic that is browsed
for the child, you are cherished memories
of the old. And everyone claps their hands.
Ancient, means only humans.
The man who only climbs under the sun
And it brings all the anxiety of flying
It’s a flash without the need for words,
it is new and ancient, like the sun and the sea.
He has crocus and sunflowers in the flowerbeds,
it disappears at a hairpin bend and then reappears.
The man so wounded by life
he’s like a dog, he bites the slope.
Bareheaded, the man leaving
Pindar, Horace, would also like
in Saba, in Marinetti, it’s poetry,
it’s the heart that launches into space,
it is pure strength, dream and fantasy,
excruciating pleasure, extreme torment.
Man-hammer and man-anvil at the same time,
millions of people and loneliness.
Panta rei, everything flows. Panta runs
plowing the mountain with broad strokes,
hopping between pinnacles and ravines
under a burning or wet sky.
It’s a cry from the highest of the tower,
it starts from the Pyrenees and arrives in Spain.
Dog among dogs, nose on the road.
Here, now he takes off his cap.
I brought one of my violins to France
of patched paper words.
I play it better if my heart beats
like an old man, like a child.
I change the pace, I change the pedaling
because it has to end
even if I want to continue.
Beyond the long, slow wing of the sea
sleep, Marco, and dream. On the pillow
a star in love will watch over you
and will accompany you all your life.
Gianni Mura for everythingBICI September 1998
