Due zingari [English translation]

“Okay, tonight it's all so fine for me

with these stars stuck to the sky

the knife blade hidden in my boot

and your smile, thirty-two pearls”.

So said the boy.

“In my life I never was hungry

and I don’t remember any thirst for water or for wine,

I have always run free, as happy as a dog

between the countryside and the outskirts,

and who knows where my parents came from,

maybe from Sicily or from Hungary?

They had eyes as fast as the wind,

they could read the music…

could read the music in the firmament”.

The girl replied: “I’m thirteen,

with thirty-two pearls in the night,

and if I could I’d marry you

to have children with broken shoes;

they would wander this and other cities,

this and other cities building carousels and roaming around.

But now it’s late even to chat”.

And so two Gypsies stood leaning against the night,

perhaps holding hands, and they were holding their eyes,

and waiting for the sunlight of the day after,

staring into the void.

On the highway near the camp

cars are going fast

and trailer trucks eat kilometres,

certainly they go far away,

the drivers stop and then go,

they say “there is fog, we must go slow”,

they leave behind…

they leave behind them a metropolitan dream.

• Artist:Francesco De Gregori
• Album:De Gregori (1978)