A LUNATIC (Un matto) - Fabrizio De Andrè

You just try to hold a world in your heart

And you’re unable to express it by words

And the day light splits the square in two

Between a whole village laughing and you, the lonely fool

Night doesn’t leave you alone either

Cause others dream about themselves, you dream about them

Yes, you’d like searching the right words to make them listen to you

A history book is enough to impress people for half an hour

I tried to learn an encyclopedia by heart

And next to “pig”, “Majakovsky” and “shoddy”

People kept reading out until branding me “insane”

And without knowing whom I owned my life

I gave my life back to die in a sanatorium

I’m not enjoying sleeping here on the hill

Nevertheless  I’ve got wits in my mind now

Here at the half-light, I create new words

But I regret the light, the light of sun

My bones are still giving Life something

Still giving her flowered grass

But life is left to the ones who mourn for the insane on the sly here on the hill

to the ones who whisper with their usual irony

Just a pitiable death tore him from madness

AN OPTOMETRIST - (Un ottico) - Fabrizio De Andrè

verse 1 (the optometrist):

Colour-blind, long-sighted, people begging for sight

I’m the light dealer, your optometrist,

from now on I declare that I just care about special clients , who have no need for normal eyes

No longer optometrist but lenses dealer, in order to help your eyes to enjoy the sight

So that pupils create new worlds to admire instead of being  true to life

Follow me into dreaming with these new eyes, escaping reality, and no chance to turn back

verse 2 (first patient):

I can see myself climbing up the sky and stealing the sun so that there will be no more night

And I’ve locked it into my eyes so that it won’t fall back into his cycle of sunsets and sundowns

So everyone feeling cool is to get warmth through my own eyes

verse 3 (second patient):

I can see rivers in my veins, looking for their sea,

Breaking their banks find new skies to photograph

Blood flooding without fantasy causes a cancer of gloom

verse 4 (third patient)

I can see policemen grazing

Women bent down looking at the dew

Their tongues red with flower pollen

Yet where is the queen bee?

Maybe she’s flown to the dawn’s nests

Maybe she is not flying any longer

verse 5 (fourth patient)

I can see my friends still walking on the street

They are not rushing

Stealing gaity from the sleep

And a touch of night from the dawn

And then the light, just light making everything into a toyworld,                                                    

Very well, we'll make the glasses accordingly,

          we'll make the glasses accordingly