Un giudice [English translation]

What it means to be

one meter and a half tall

is revealed by people's stares and jokes,

or by the curiosity of an irreverent girl

who only approaches you

due to a saucy doubt of hers:

she wants to find out whether

the saying on midgets is true,

that they are the best endowed

with the virtue last seen,

among all virtues, the most obscene.

Years and months pass by,

even minutes when you count them;

it's sad to find yourself a grown-up

without having grown up.

Malignant gossip insists, and

beats its tongue on the drum,

going as far as saying a midget

must be a swine for sure,

because he's got his heart far,

far too close to his asshole.

It was during sleepless nights,

awake with resentment's glow,

that I prepared for my exams

and became an attorney,

to proceed along the road

that starting from a cathedral's pews

leads towards first the sacristy,

then the bench of a courthouse:

finally a judge,

decider of good and bad here on Earth!

And by then, my height would

no longer set into a good mood

those who standing at the bar

were calling me "Your Honor";

and sending them to the gallows

was a pleasure wholly my own,

before kneeling down

upon bidding farewell,

for I did not know

God's height.

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