Stop everything,
we want to get off the train
that struggles on, stop after stop,
arrest after arrest,
its tracks never quite becoming tangent,
lodged, without comfort, on the bandwagon
of a state agency, of a multinational corporation,
of the chairs at a condominium meeting;
it is better to ride in the last carriage, they say,
in case of an accident we shall have
the incontrovertible fortune of dying brain-dead.
Stop everything,
we want to get off the roller coaster
that dances and spins upon itself,
turning us upside down, heads under and backsides out,
far from the constraint of the reflux of liberalizations,
the freedom to exit the labor market,
to refuse laurel crowns, to belch before a consistory,
contesting VAT, property tax, income tax, local tax, high-speed rail,
Tavor and Serenase, taken out of urgent necessity
at every urge to croak outside the chorus.
Stop everything,
enough, stop,
the European Union asks it of us from the dark corners of a porno shop;
millions of homeless from American society ask it of us,
glad to join the thousands of new members of Ambrosian Caritas;
professors of economics and masters of finance ask it of us,
ready to translate the despair of the people into executive orders,
with the ultimate aim of relocating from the Hungarian area
the headquarters of a major industry, installing them in Termini Imerese.