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

You try to have a world in your heart

and can not express it with words,

and the light of the day divides the square

between a village laughing and you, you idiot, that passes by,

and not even the night leaves you alone:

the others dream themselves and you dream of them.

And yes, even you would go to search

the safe words to let them hear you:

half an hour is just needed to impress a history book,

I tried to learn the Treccani from memory,

and after 'pig', 'Mayakovsky', 'misdeed',

others continued to read me 'madman'.

And without knowing who I should thank for my life

in a mental hospital I have returned it:

I sleep here on the hill reluctantly

yet now there is light in my thoughts,

here in the twilight hour I invent words

but regret a light, the light of the sun.

My bones still give to life:

still give her the flowery grass.

But life has remained in the words on the sly

of those who have lost the idiot and is crying for him on the hill;

of those who still whisper 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)