Lido The Poet

Lido owns a restaurant here in Cortona, Croce del Travaglio. In fact, it’s one of our favorite places to go – a small, family-run place with fantastic Tuscan dishes and heavenly wood-fired-oven pizzas. His restaurant, like all in Italy right now, is closed as we all stay at home.

One of the things that I’ve learned about Italians is that, by and large, they are not really defined by the jobs they do. Rather, their humanity and capacity for seeing a different perspective is the thing that they carry with them to their day-to-day lives. Lido is just such a man, a poet who also serves great food.

Below, I’m posting (with Lido’s permission) a piece that was published in L’Etruria, a newspaper that covers this southeastern corner of Tuscany. Lido wrote it after a walk near Santa Maria Nuova, just before we were all confined to our homes here. I thought it was worth reading. (I’ve had Google translate from the Italian and edited a bit for English clarity):

“This afternoon I spent in my valley, with the excuse of wild asparagus, which I didn’t find on time; but I didn’t look for them too much.

“Instead, I sat looking at the landscape, and the houses, remembering all the friends who lived there, when as if by magic my gaze stopped on one: it was the home of the old sage Attilio Ricci, for me an added grandfather who loved me very much.
From here a story came to my mind which he told me on a stormy evening during which I was afraid.

The wild man!

“He sat in front of the large hearth where large logs burned, crackling, and made me cuddle between his legs and said to me:

“‘Once upon a time a wild man lived in a large forest. During the summer when he could stay warm and dry, he would eat succulent berries, game, and all the fruits that the forest gave, but he was sad and worried because everything it could not last.
Instead, he was happy in moments of thin, famine, frost and snow because he thought that everything could only improve.’

“I felt light-hearted! And it is with this that I give you a good evening and a good night.

“Dear friends, do not think of me as unaware – someone who does not worry. But weeping is useless, if this true story that happened to me as a child makes a person feel a little more serene, I would be happy.”

– Lido Rossi

Lido – as soon as you reopen, we’ll be in for a pizza.