At the beginning of Viale Vittorio Veneto

there is a monument to the fallen

of the First World War.

Looking at it, I thought

of a general on television

who said that wars are fought with weapons,

but it is always men who win them.

I think he is wrong:

the truth is that men

always lose wars.

Unfortunately, they are such fools

that, in the very same way they lose them,

they always find them again.

Perhaps they are not the same soldiers,

nor are they even the same wars,

and the weapons have all changed too;

new weapons,

new wars for new soldiers,

but men are always the same,

and men, wars,

all they ever do is lose them.