Risvegli di un paese. Awakenings of a rural community

Abstract Throughout Europe, particularly in Italy, the rapid phenomenon of rural marginalization and depletion is one of the most significant social and environmental challenges characterizing contemporary reality. Where, in the second post‐war era, about half of the Italian population lived in rural settings, today this percentage has precipitously fallen, leading to an estimated urbanization rate of 70%, concentrated within an area that covers about 30% of the national territory. The future of the remaining 70% is uncertain, raising questions about the country's territorial cohesion and the management of its environmental resources. As the future and present of these communities are increasingly defined by trajectories of impoverishment, aging, and depopulation, these communities' voices seem marginal in the debate, utterly unheard amidst the complexities urban centers face. This poetic project's series of tercets aims to narrate the cosmos of ordinary effects that mark the everyday life of a village amidst phenomena of rewilding, growing silences, and abandonments. It dwells on a specific moment of the day, culturally laden with expectations and meanings, namely the dawn, portrayed here as the advance of a new day, a guarantor of the future, though the forms of this future remain uncertain.