Francesco Puppo (1900-1994)

He was born in Rosario de Santa Fe in Argentina, but was brought to Genoa as a child and later lived in Ponte Organasco and – in the second half of his life – in San Lorenzo della Costa, above Santa Margherita. He was a doctor by profession, and also a delicate painter of watercolors, in which he expressed the same world as in his verses, inspired by the poetics of fragmentism, all based on rapid illuminations and descriptions of natural reality. He had begun writing Genoese poems as early as the 1920s and 1930s, but he decided to publish them only half a century later, in the two small volumes D’arrescoso (1976) and In sciô scheuggio (1981). Puppo, in a form independent of Firpo, had “developed his own tendency to renew the traditional forms of Genoese poetry” (F. Toso), while preserving his own personal characteristic style.

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Cädua
sciabbrâ de sô
’n sciâ miagia
scua.
Stridô
angoscioso de çigae.

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Dipinze i monti,
o mâ,
çê, arbô e tramonti,
e quello
che gh’ò drento
pe arruxentâme.

Ponte Organasco (1936)

Ansciâ de secoli
e fadiga
in sce unna tæra
stentâ,
into gossâ lento
de oe:
nascita, nòsse, mòrte
into gossâ lento
da vitta.

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In sce unna còsta
besiggiâ da-i venti,
nua
comme o Carvaio,
gh’é un erboo solitäio,
speronçio:
o pâ unna man
che con un dio
scheletrio
a mostra o çê.

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Pesco assettou in sciô scheuggio
da vegiaia;
abboccan i ricòrdi à no finî,
ma pe fortuña
no abbocca l’avvegnî

Core di tempi neigri
e no sò cöse dî, cöse sperâ;
penso a-o çê de vòtte accabannou
dove zeuga un barlumme de sô
comme inte unna cea scua
l’accenno de un sorriso.

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Seiañe romantiche
in Arbâ, novelli sposi,
pe-e straddette solitäie
che chiñan a-o mâ
e profummi da-e ville
e gra-gra de rænette.

Seiañe de stæ:
coriosa a luña
a s’avansava à Portofin
e in sciô mâ paxe a segnava
’na stradda lumminosa,
sensa fin, comme
a nòstra feliçitæ.