Un chimico [English translation]

Only death brought me to the hill

a body among many to give phosphorus to the air

to bivouac fires that are called fatuous*

that leave no ash, that melt no hoarfrost.

Only death brought me into the hill.

One day as a chemist I had the power

to marry the elements and make them react,

but men I could never understand

why would they combine themselves through love,

entrusting to a game the joy and pain.

Look at the smile, look at the color

how they play on the face of those who seek love:

but the same smile, the same color

where are they on the face of those who had love?

Where are they on the face of those who had love.

It's strange to leave without suffering,

without a woman's face to remember.

But is it so different your dying,

you that expose yourselves to love, that surrender to the April?

What's different in your dying?

Spring does not knock, it enters confidently

as the smoke penetrates into every crevice,

has the lips of pulp, the hair of wheat

what a fear, what a desire that it takes you by the hand.

What a fear, what a desire that it takes you away.

But look at the hydrogen, quiet in the sea

Look at the oxygen sleeping by its side:

only one law that I can understand

has been able to marry them without letting them burst.

Only the law that I can understand.

I was chemist and, no, I didn't want to marry.

I didn't know with whom and who I would have generated:

I died in a wrong experiment

just like the idiots who die of love.

And someone will say that there is a better way.

• Artist:Fabrizio De André
• Album:Non al denaro non all’amore né al cielo (1971)