The Street Poet

“Whoever stops dreaming is destined to die” 
(Ismail Aliosci)

After the exceptional stories of women who tried to change the society they lived in, as I told you in the last few articles, this time I want to get back down to earth, or rather on a sidewalk, to tell you a very simple story.

The story of a street poet.

Not a poet of sublime lines or an award winner, but a truly simple poet in the pure essence of the term. And the sidewalks are those of Rome.

It is a story that I read at the bottom of a newspaper in the chronicle of Rome.

That news of a few lines above the advertisements for cars or cookies.

His name is Ismail Aliosci, he is 68 years old and comes from Macedonia.

Ismail had two great loves in his life, poetry, and his wife.

Born in Plasnitsa, a municipality in the west of the Republic of Macedonia, Ismail always wrote poetry at school, until he had to abandon both of them at 16 to work.

In Macedonia, he had his blue-collar job, his beloved wife, and two teenage children.

But in 1993 he was forced to come to Italy to work and support his family because there was no more work in his country.

Then 21 years ago the beloved wife falls ill and died.

It was 8 am on December 29 and she was 41 years old.

In 2004 he too was fired from the company where he worked in Milan.

Then his brother and his parents die.

The blows of life are too many and too hard.

He begins a slow descent into the underworld of pain and depression.

Up to abandon everything and start living on the street.

His area is that of Piazza della Repubblica, where he is also followed by an aid structure.

Before, he shared a bed on the ground with a friend who then moved to live in a seaside city near Rome.

Ismail is left alone and takes care of that part of the street by sweeping and cleaning it of the rubbish.

He has never heard of his children again.

 

So far it could be a story like many others because Rome is full – unfortunately – of stories of broken life like that of Ismail.

But he is not completely alone. He has one of the passions he had ever had since he was a boy: poetry.

And what better way to remember his beloved missing wife than to dedicate a poem to her every day.

Not long poems but just a few lines, even a single verse, which he then gives to passers-by for a few cents or even just a smile in return.

 “I wish I was a dream to be with you at night”

“Love is life, I want to live on you”

Then, it also happens that a passer-by who often happens in those parts begins to become attached to this little man who shelters from the heat and rain with a small umbrella. It helps him to publish a book of poems: a hundred copies were printed and sold.

He never abandons his notebook in which he writes verses every day and offers them to people who often don't even deserve a glance.

This story is a little solo of romance and endurance.

The idea that poetry can be a rock that emerges and to which to cling to to resist the eddies of the stormy sea of life is truly touching.

 

Gibran wrote: “Love which is not always springing is always dying”.

Everything that Ismail loved most is dead but, instead of renouncing the loss, he was able to get up in his own way, precisely in the memory of the love written to be given in exchange for a smile from a stranger.

I think this story needs to be told because it could teach us something. Each of us then draw his own conclusions.

 

Poetry and Dignity.

Italian version