“It hurt me a lot, I saw / the world as a huge fail, / an enormous blunder, one only, / unparalleled mistake” the poet writes, after having briefly depicted a group of young women at work by the roadside. These girls belong to that kind of people who somebody may define as “the last”. People of whom Paolo Polvani captures the deepest humanity, the daily gestures, the episodes revealing the efforts, injustices and dangers which mark out their lives. Among them, the window cleaner Aziz who used to be an engineer in his country, the Romanian carer who smiles about the crazy old woman who she takes care of and who would prefer somebody from Russia, the man robbed by a brother at the soup kitchen for migrants, the beggar promising Our Lady of Romania outside the supermarket. Besides them, there are the elder people who bring their stories to the line where they stand waiting for their pension, the waiters with a sarcastic smile and a philosophical attitude, the girl who came from the Apulian countryside to work as a postwoman in Parma, and the eighty-year-old communist whose sons are indifferent to his ideals and who finds comfort in white wine. Group scenes and individual portraits alternate while the rhythm of poetry sometimes speeds up resulting in rhymed little songs and sometimes slows down to lengthy tracking shots: migrants and Italians are in the same boat, they potentially belong to the class whose existence the political and financial powers have been long trying to deny. Empathy and attention to detail prevent the author from creating stereotypes: every character is a unique individual, who we will keep in our mind and our heart, someone who by their mere presence denounce the unhealthy workings of our society. We should suspend judgment, silence the imperatives / of production, the watchwords of efficiency and profit. If we don’t react we will become complicit in all this, like the “Giuve” supporter who is indifferent to any disaster, provided that his beloved team wins.