Each springtime is pure joy. I use to go to the countryside where I love watching what risks to be unobserved in huge cities. Nature shows off with its entire splendour with explosions of colours, the vivid green, the cornfields, thorntrees full of white flowers, everywhere springtime is in the air. Fields are tarnished of the red of the poppies that get higher and higher.
While I slow down passing from the highway to the country roads everything passes to a different dimension, a rural one, genuine where my gaze can sweep over the landscapes. Going back some years I recall the song that sometime my grandmother was used to sing to me: Poppies and Ducklings.
“You know that poppies are tall, tall, tall,
and you are short, and you are short.
You know that poppies are tall, tall, tall,
and you are short, it can’t be helped.”
Since my childhood, I had always thought that that song was a kids’ song related only to springtime but I was wrong. Behind that playful lyric there is a bitter truth that will never change.
Mario Panzeri, Italian composer of the past century born in Milan, since his childhood showed a deep love for the show business. During the twenty years of the fascist regime he also has some troubles with the censorship. His songs caught the public attention with their playful notes and rhythms but in the lyrics there was a slight sign of irony that, even if really hidden and always denied by him, was not appreciated by the regime people.
Anyway the regime didn’t stop him and when the second world war was over he continued writings songs. In the 1952 he applied to the Sanremo Festival with a song sang by the Italian singer Nilla Pizzi: Papaveri e Papere (Poppies and Ducklings).
The song achieved the second prize. Such a success that was translated in more than forty languages and made a lot of money.
But who are the poppies and the ducklings? Probably in his subtle irony, Mario Panzeri, was referring to powerful people while the ducklings are normal people that have to cope with everyday life’s problems. A message hidden behind this apparently happy song.
I end the post giving you the link of the version interpreted by the singer Renato Carosone.
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