In Santiago, on a normal day
having tea at the Coppelia icecream parlour
between women in furs and blond youth
I met el Señor Fulci, wise and elegant

a businessman in copper and maybe in arms
and who spoke many languages,
including italian,
he explained: “You know
what your problem is?
It’s that camera

you give a lot of importance
to depressing things
from a simple death you create a great scene
how much better the world would be
if you didn’t talk about depressing things!

there are many other things to be seen
for example the lovely shops downtown
also here in Chile we like “la moda italiana”
you would also be more serene
if you didn’t give importance
to depressing things
confidentially, I’ll give you some advise
don’t stick your noise in our business”.

I had a dream the other night
the journalists left Israel
a smiling Señor Fulci accompained them
to the airplane and waved good-bye

the camera crew went away
and they will never come back
when the last foreigner left Israel
el Señor Fulci let out a sigh of relief

After a little while everything returned
to normal
there wasn’t anymore broken arms
nor stones thrown in the streets
nor attacks on the mosques, nor children
whose life
had been cut short by a bullet
depressing things had truely left the land

Someone said that the soldiers
had gone back to their barracks
now no one threw stones
now there wasn’t anyone in the streets

Now whoever might by chance walk
by Palestinian Camps wouldn’t have anything
to write about
they were all in their shanties, so quiet
that you would be able to believe
that just maybe there wasn’t anymore around

And the Israelian opposition
to the government
indignant, deluded, betrayed
stopped writing to our newspaper
and they didn’t bother to write even to us

And so we didn’t have any corrispondence
and everything became very distant:
distant like the military airplanes
when they fly
through the sky
and we can not know the reason why
or to where they fly

And I dreamt of Señor Shamir who said:
“Now there isn’t any longer
a Palestinian Problem
and even among ourselves we all agree
that we will no longer think about
depressing things
we don’t want to think about any holocaust,
about ANY OLOCAUST, not even
our own
if there is anything that we want
to think about
it is “la moda italiana”

The dream continued with my saying
to Señor Fulci
that people like him looked the same
everywhere
they ask for time and patience
and they don’t allow for time patience
and the silence that they want
only comes after screams

And so I said to Señor Fulci and
he looked at the designs and shook
his head. And he didn’t smile
but all of a sudden he screamed angryly:

“Don’t stick your noise into our business
Jewish or Palestinian makes no difference
there isn’t anything to see
absolutely nothing to see!”

and while he was speaking
in back of him I saw
again the soldiers
and the writing on the walls
and the women of the mosques
and the stones and bullets flew
and the depressing things came again
along with a little hope