Poesia dedicated to Marco and Chiara: Grenfell Tower London Fire

‘This is not a poem, it is a letter...’

Marco and Gloria, This Is Not a Poem, It Is a Letter
To those who sat next to me

On the direct flight to London

And asked me how to settle there,

As someone who had lived in England for fifteen years

Before returning to her motherland.

I was just visiting Oxford for a holiday that time,
A former expatriate with information and advice
For two doves flying towards a new dream
That had once also been mine.
We talked, sitting next to each other,
Sharing tea and British snacks.

"Where do we look for a home? How do we change money?
What should we eat? What should we say, or not say,
So as not to annoy the Brits?"

After we went through passport control,
I saw you going down the escalator,
Holding hands. You turned
And gave me your smiles,
Full of hope and life.

And now I see you in your online London photo album,
With the air of residents rather than tourists.
One photograph frames you against the background
Of a neoclassical British palace
Built of ivory stone with tall arches. Side by side,
I see you in another, holding two lagers:
Marco, in your black leather jacket from Camden Market,
And you, Gloria, with your freshly dyed, shining hair.
The same open smiles, though now somewhat enigmatic.

In two more pictures you are sitting
On a bench at Latimer Road Tube Station
And lying on the grass in Hyde Park,
Recently employed, with an assured future in sight.

And I look at you while I stare at the pillar of fire.
Gloria, you are texting your dearest friend:
"Remember me, I am dying."
Marco, you are sitting on the floor,
Your face hidden in your hands.

It burns on, burns on, burns on, that fire,
And carries you to the sky forever,
Holding hands.

This is not a poem; it is a letter.
The poetry was in your smiles.

(Erminia Passannanti, Salerno, 27 August 2017)

The poem presents itself as a letter, yet it ultimately takes the form of an elegy devoted to the memory of two young Italian people who have disappeared in a fire. The title, “This is not a poem, it is a letter,” establishes an intimate relationship between the poetic voice and its addressees. The poet does not stand before two anonymous victims of a collective tragedy, but before two individuals encountered in their everyday life, before their destiny transformed them into public symbols.

The central value of the poem begins from a small and private moment: a journey by plane from an Italian city to London. Marco and Gloria are not introduced through the tragedy that awaits them, but through their hopes. They are two young people beginning a new life, full of practical questions:

“Where do we look for a home; how do we change money;
What should we eat; what should we say or not say
So as not to annoy the Brits?”

Looking for a home, learning what to eat, understanding what one should say or avoid saying means searching for a place within a new society. The poem captures the delicate moment in which a person crosses the boundary between being a stranger and becoming an inhabitant of a place. The reference to language is particularly significant: asking “what should we say or not say” means questioning the invisible codes that govern belonging.

The image of the “two doves flying towards a new dream” introduces the first symbolic element of the poem. The doves suggest vulnerability, fidelity, and the desire for peace. Marco and Gloria, rather than heroic figures, are the committed protagonists of a romantic adventure of migration; they are two ordinary people searching for a possible future as Italian expatriates. The significance of their journey arises from the great and admirable simplicity of their aspirations.

The following scene, after passport control, acquires particular importance:

“I saw you guys going down the escalator
Holding hands. You turned
And gave me your smiles
Full of hope and life.”

This moment, retrospectively, captures an image of life through the caring glance of the poet, who follows them while they go down the escalator. The gesture of holding hands and smiling is the last positive vision before the poet meets them again some years later, through the news of the tragedy.

The stanzas about Gloria and Marco’s online photographs on Facebook are the most moving ones:

“With the air of residents rather than tourists.”

This sentence has an emotional impact because it indicates that Marco and Gloria had achieved what they were seeking during their initial journey: they were no longer tourists passing through, but inhabitants of London. The photographs show the process through which a new hybrid identity had been added to their Italian one: the neoclassical palaces in London, the Camden Market clothes, the lagers, the Tube station, Hyde Park. These are fragments of ordinary life, precisely the life that the Grenfell Tower fire would interrupt.

The contrast between the luminous tone of the photographs and the appearance of fire takes readers to the tragic scene. The line:

“And I look at you while I stare at the pillar of fire.”

indicates the Grenfell Tower Fire of 2017. The “pillar of fire” refers to the column of flames that consumed the London residential tower. At the same time, by preserving the biblical resonance of the expression, the fire also acquires the meaning of an irreversible separation between the world of the living and the world of the dead. The most dramatic moment is Gloria’s message:

“Remember me, I am dying.”

This sentence has a testimonial dimension within the poem. The request to be remembered is the moral centre of the text. Gloria, on the point of dying, asks not to be erased from her dear friend’s memory.

The poem responds precisely to that request: it preserves an image of her before death, restoring an identity that precedes the tragedy.

Marco too, sitting on the floor with his face hidden in his hands, is removed from the image of the anonymous victim. The scene conveys the human terror of the event while preserving his individuality.

The repetition:

“It burns on, burns on, burns on, that fire”

has an almost ritual quality. The fire continues in collective memory, yet the poem performs the opposite movement: while fire destroys, memory preserves. The final gesture:

“Holding hands.”

recalls the scene on the escalator at the beginning of the poem. The composition closes in a circular movement: the same image that represented hope before the tragedy becomes an image of union beyond death.

The ending:

“This is not a poem; it is a letter.
The poetry was in your smiles.”

therefore acquires a deeper meaning. The poet states that poetry does not arise from literary invention, but from the encounter with two real lives, and thus makes it an act of remembrance, almost an answer to Gloria’s words: “Remember me.”

The poem gives Marco and Gloria back what every collective tragedy risks taking away: their personal history, their imagined future, and their smiles.