The italian Poet Sergio Penco

SERGIO PENCO (Trieste 1943 – 2009)

With the plate”Sergio Penco” we remember with regret the Italian poet Sergio Penco, firend of the Association and Young poets, for a long time a member of the jury of the competition.

The poet Sergio Penco left a plentiful literary production of poems.

Published works:

“Guadalajara”(1978)

“Ballate dal Mary celeste” [Ballades for Mary celeste] (1998)

“Ballate di Cane nero” [Ballades of Cane Nero ](2002),

“Con una rosa dei venti tra i denti” [ With a windrose between teeth] (2008)

Finally the little book of “Unpublished poems” released 10 days before his death, in November 2009.

 

Sergio Penco poems were oft published in anthologies as well as in national and international journals.

He expressed his clever humour in 2 volumes of satirical poems written in the dialect of Trieste, his city, printed under the pen name Dino Brezza.

About him has been written: “Sergio Penco is a poet with many “chords”, with various but coherent linguistic and expressive attitudes: lightly lyrical, he identified  intensively  with social contradictions and historical stratification of his city, being non conformist, straightforward honest, mocking but always with a participant sentiment of pity and sharing for conscious and unconscious losers, and finally for everyone” (G.Scialino)

 

Poem on the moments of happiness

 

The moments of happiness offered to you

Unexpected and unusual,

So must be lived, in a freeze-frame,

Without a gesture, tremor or a breathing,

Just like a sunset on the sea

Resembling a playful dance of fairies,

With seagull wings over strokes

Of grey, violet and flaming red

And a swarming of sombre, impatient foam.

The moments of happiness igniting you

As a sudden blaze of fire

Must be lived in a standstill:

If you move, even only inside, even a little,

Everything will pass too fast. 

(Sergio Penco in “Ballate dal Mary celeste)