Autogrill [English translation]

The girl behind the counter blended ale and Seven-up,

And her dimpled smile and teeth were like the ones from ads,

As the faces on the walls of the small roadside restaurants,

While my secret dreams were roared away by the trucks.

She had an immature beauty, blonde without appearing like so,

Almost sad, like flowers and grass of a railway embankment,

The silence was only scratched by my chimeras

That I traced with a finger inside the glass' circles.

The sun, low to the horizon, colored the window

And printed lightning and fingerprints on the gasoline pump,

The soda-fountain mirrored that little-girl face

And I… I felt a close unhappiness.

Ashamed, but only just a little, I put a disc in the juke-box

To feel almost like in a scene from an old Fox-movie,

But I didn’t want to say her some useless cliché

I tapped a Hindu in a tin box of tea1 …

But in the game I would have to say, «Look, I feel you would like to talk …»

Then taking his hand over the counter: «I do not know how to begin:

Can’t you see, can’t you touch that melancholy today?

Do not let it boil over: come on, come away with me. »

My ambience track ended in a squeak,

You could hear a drip in that heavy atmosfere made of neon lights:

My suspended sentence drowned the clattering,

«And I …», but then came a couple all of a sudden …

In a moment, as often happens, everything changed

The curtains in pink nylon erased all of a sudden every reflection,

The white road called me. «How much?» I asked, and I paid,

I left a nickel as a tip, I took the change and went away…

1. He refers to this kind Of box: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_RRMP9xE6ZLE/Syi0OjGAleI/AAAAAAAAAFI/fFmSD-zMKs...

• Artist:Francesco Guccini