In this collection of poems we find traces of an era, not always recognisable footprints of that period which emerged from the end of the Second World War and spanned a forty-year period (which I consider to be from 1948 to 1991, and for which I take full responsibility) of peace and stability – relative, of course, yet essentially attributable to an international balance.

But there is no nostalgia here for the ‘good old days’; that would be too simplistic for a poet and essayist as attentive and inquisitive as the author. He remains a firm believer in an age in which social and cultural changes—largely brought about by the spread of the technological empire—no longer allow for the emergence of poetry that is firmly grounded in a verse that can be attached, almost glued, and that can take root in fairly well-established facts of reality (from the preface by Roberto Dall’Olio).