In memory of Bino Rocca, an honorary Dubliner

Dublin
1969

From Collecchio a town in the Po plain
Bino Rocca a sculptor of statuary
Fit for the doleful Celtic cemetery
Moved to a Dublin filled with the telltale
Cadastral trappings of the English Pale
And lived in an exclusive city acre
Being married to an embassy caretaker

Bino told me he’d seen death at its worst
During Mussolini’s Ethiopian campaign
When a force of storming tribesmen traversed
With lethal burns an Yperite-strewn terrain

The use of mustard gas in the African sticks
Was only made public in nineteen ninety-six
And all Italy was shocked at a crime
Of which I had been aware for a long time

But Bino did a posthumous good deed
As I remembered his words after a bout
Of the famine-inducing Ethiopian drought
And sent a cow herd to a tribe in need

(Lamberto Bozzi, 5.1.2014)