Il sogno di Maria [English translation]

1

«In the damp, dark bowels of the temple,

the shadow was cold, stuffed with incense;

the angel came down, like every evening,

to teach me a new prayer;

then, suddenly, he drew my hands apart,

and my arms became like wings;

when he asked me ‟Do you know about Summer?”

I - for one day, for one moment -

I dashed to see the color of the wind.

«We really flew over the houses,

beyond the gates, the gardens, the streets;

then we glided through blooming valleys,

where the grapevine embraces the olive tree.

We descended there, where the day gets lost

in looking for itself hidden in the green;

and he spoke as one does in praying,

and at the end of every prayer

he counted one vertebra on my back.

«The long shadows of the priests

forced the dream inside a circle of voices;

I tried to escape with my wings from before,

but my arm was bare and it couldn’t fly;

then I saw the angel change into a comet,

and the stern faces turned into stone,

their arms were contours of branches,

in the motionless gestures from another life,

their hands were leaves, their fingers were thorns.

«Voices in the street, sounds of people,

stole me from my dream and brought me back to the present.

The image faded, the color bleached,

but the distant echo of brief words

was repeating the strange prayer of an angel,

where maybe it was dreaming, but it wasn’t sleeping:

‟They will call it ‹son of God›”,

confused words in my mind,

vanished in a dream, but imprinted in my womb.»

And her exhausted speech

dissolved into weeping,

but her fear gathered

from her lips into her eyes

half-closed in a gesture

of illusory calmness

that wears out while waiting

for an indulgent look.

And you slowly laid your fingers

on the edge of her forehead:

when caressing, old people

are afraid of being too rough.

1. Mary is trying to explain to Joseph how she got pregnant.

She tells him about her dream with an angel who freed her from the fears and troubles of her former life in the temple - when she was oppressed by the priests and the strict lifestyle - and taught her about love.

When she is over recounting her dream, she starts weeping, fearing Joseph’s response. However, Joseph is sympathetic.

• Artist:Fabrizio De André
• Album:La buona novella (1970)