A Chorus (Summer days in Monza)

Helmets, casually by their side hang, Vespa keys low in their pockets.

Dark shades obscure their estimations, these characters decorated like birds, in shady piazzas.

Like birds expending so much energy to attract and to impress, only not so convincing in purpose as the birds, not nearly so charming in their dance.

These, the embodiment of this small city forever parading and masquerading, are singing a song I can never grasp.

In long gilded Monza days, afternoon sun illuminates window arrangements, of necessities we’re supposed to wake up to buy. Prices shock with logic mysterious. Why our sun chooses to illuminate them is another mystery. Even in this light it’s a chorus I cannot understand.

Senegalese urchins or merchants, depending on whether you are looking to buy, hawk fake leather bags, belts and wallets and yet their price seems closer to any reality than the originals behind glass.

Then a confusing scramble (confusing because nobody runs in these streets for strolling), the Senegalese flee another police patrol, of swaggering scorning men with manicured goatees, in half pursuit. Some transactions are cut half way, suddenly its Wall Street-like decisions of whether to buy this instant or forever miss the bargain, who knows what to do?!

But no matter, returning five minutes later there they are again, to offer rich women style at a poor man’s price, then the street parade rolls on, those decorated birds still fluttering around the piazza, all the while Monza singing a chorus I can’t quite comprehend.