Un matto [dietro ogni scemo c’è un villaggio] [English translation]

Try to have a world in your heart

and not to be able to express it with words,

and the light of the day divides the square

in the village that laughs and you, the idiot who walks,

and neither the night leaves you alone:

the others dream about themselves and you dream of them.

And yes, even you would go to look for

safe words to be listened to:

to show off half an hour a history book is enough,

I tried to memorize a whole Encyclopedia,

and after pig, Majakovsky, misdeed,

the others kept on until reading me fool.

And without knowing to whom I owe my life

in a mental hospital I have given it back:

here on the hill I sleep reluctantly

but now there is light in my thoughts,

here in the shadows now I invent words

but I regret a light, the light of the sun.

My bones still give something to life:

the offer still blooming grass.

But the life has remained in the muted voices

of those who have lost the idiot and who lament him on the hill;

of those who still whispers with the same irony

"A merciful death tore him from madness."

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