Cyrano [English translation]

Come on up, you with a short nose,

rouged gentlemen, I can’t stand you anymore.

I’ll stick my pen deep into your pride

because with this sword I'll kill you whenever I want.

Come on up, scruffy poets,

useless singers of wretched days,

clowns who live by strenghtless verses,

you may have money and glory

but you aren’t thick skinned;

enjoy the success, enjoy it while it lasts

since the audience is trained and you don’t fear them,

and you go God knows where to not pay taxes

with the sneer and the ignorance of the first in the class.

I’m just a poor cadet1of Gascony,

but I cannot stand people who don’t dream.

Tinsels? Social climbing? I don’t take the bait

and at the end of my license

I don’t forgive and I strike!

Let's get it over with, come on, all of you,

new protagonists, rampant politicians,

come on political footmen, toadies and wimps,

fierce presenters of false broadcasts,

you who've often made an art of opportunism,

come on liberalists, show your cards,

anyway there will always be those who will pay for it

in this damned, absurd “Bel Paese”.

I don’t give a damn if I’m wrong,

displeasing is my pleasure, I love being hated;

with sly people and bullies I’ve always toyed

and at the end of my license

I don’t forgive and I strike!

But when I’m alone, chained to my nose

which always arrives at least half an hour before me,

my rage subsides and I'm painfully reminded

that for me, the dream of love is almost forbidden.

I don’t know how many women I've loved,

I don’t know how many of them I've had,

whether I or destiny are to blame, I've lost them all.

And when I feel the weight of always being alone

I lock myself at home and write,

and by writing I console myself;

but inside me I feel that a great love exists,

I love without sinning, I love but I’m sad

because Roxane is beautiful, we are so different,

I can’t talk to her, I’ll talk to her by verses,

I’ll talk to her by verses…

Came on, vacuous people, get it over with,

you priests who sell everyone another life;

if, as you say, there is a God of infinity,

look inside your own heart, you’ve already betrayed him.

And you materialists, with your idée fixe

that God is dead and that man is alone in this abyss,

you look for the truths on the ground, like pigs,

keep your acorns, leave me my wings.

Go home dwarfs, get out of the front,

for my huge anger I need giants!

From dogmas and prejudices I don’t take the bait

and at the end of my license

I don’t forgive and I strike!

I strike my enemies with my nose and with my sword

but in this life today I can no longer find my way.

I don’t want to resign myself to be evil,

only you can save me, only you, and I write it to you:

There must be, I feel it, on Earth or in Heaven, a place

in which we won’t suffer and everything will be fair.

Don’t laugh, please, at these words of mine,

I’m just a shadow and you, Roxane, the sun.

But I know you don’t laugh, sweetest lady,

and I don’t hide myself under your house

because by now I feel I haven’t suffered in vain

if you love me just as I am,

forever yours, forever yours,

forever your… Cyrano

1. Not firstborn son of a noble family.

• Artist:Francesco Guccini