Amerigo [English translation]

Most likely, he1 went out,

closing the green door behind him,

Someone had woken up

to hastily prepare him a barley coffee.

I don't know if he looked back,

he wasn't the kind of man who wastes time

in sentimentalism more fitting for rich people

and went his way, effortlessly.

When I first met him,

or in my first memory of him, he was already old

or maybe he struck me as an old man,

but I wasn't in school yet.

He had a striking, bald head

and a mysterious, odd device,

a hernia belt that

looked like a gun holster.

But that morning he had

the face of a 20-year-old, without lines,

and anger and adventure

and still vague ideas about socialism,

harsh words for his father

and behind that, a long story of hunger and migration

and for his job

that crushes and kills, [he had] fatalism.

But that morning he had

new feelings for his home and his mother

and to fight them off he had

in his body the first wine from a cellar

and he could already feel on his face

the smell of fuel and sea of Le Havre

and he could already feel in his mouth

the taste of mine dust.

Back then, for me America was

Roosevelt's G.I.s, the Fifth Army,

America was Atlantis

America was the heart, it was fate,

America was Life,

smiles and white teeth on glossy paper

America was the dreamy,

mysterious world of Donald Duck.

Back then, America was

for me pleasant suburbs, a peaceful world

a lost paradise

subtle melancholy, a simmering obsession,

and Gunga-Din and Ringo,

the heroes of Casablanca and Fort Apache

a dream along the continuous,

obsessive sound of Limentra Creek2.

I don't know how he saw it

when the ship offered him New York, so close,

a forest of skyscrapers

a city of faeces and streets and cries, a castle

and Pavana3 [was] a memory

left between the chestnut trees of the Apennines,

English [was] a weird sound

that hurt his heart like a knife.

And [his life] was work and blood,

it was the same struggle from morning till night

for years [that passed] like jailtime,

[years] of beer and whores, of hard days

of Negroes and Irishmen,

Poles and Italians in the mine

sweat and anthracite

in Pennsylvania, Arkansas, Texas, Missouri.

He came back, like many others,

a few bucks, his youth already over,

America was a corner,

America was a shadow, a thin fog

America was a hernia,

one of those tricks life plays on you,

it was his habit of saying "boss" for "capo",

"ton" for "tonnellata" and "raif" for "fucile"4.

When I first met him,

or in my first memory of him, he was already old,

dismissive, just like any youngster,

I used to slip past him without understanding5 him

and I couldn't understand that

that man was my face, my [reflection in a] mirror,

until the time comes when

I'll meet him again in front of the entire world,

until the time comes when

I'll meet him again in front of the entire world,

until the time comes when

I'll meet him again in front of the entire world.

1. "Amerigo" is Enrico, Francesco Guccini's great-uncle2. Small river close to Guccini's ancestral home in Pavana (see below)3. Guccini's village on the Apennines in central Italy4. Enrico used English words (boss, ton, rifle) instead of the equivalent Italian ones (capo, tonnellata, fucile). "Raif" approximates the way an Italian speaker would write the sound of "rifle". 5. lit: grasping

• Artist:Francesco Guccini
• Album:Amerigo