Il sogno di Maria [English translation]

In the damp, dark interior of the temple

shadows were cold and filled with incense smoke.

The angel came, as he did every night,

to teach me a new prayer.

Then, suddenly, he opened my hands

and my arms became wings.

When he asked me "Do you know what summer is?"

for a day, for a single moment

I ran to see the color of wind.

We truly flied over houses

beyond gates, gardens and streets.

Then we glided over valleys in bloom

where grapes embrace olive trees.

We drifted down where the day fades

to look for itself among all the green

and he spoke and it sounded like a prayer

and at the end of each prayer

he counted a vertebra down my back.

The long shadows of priests

locked my dream in a circle of voices

I wanted to fly away with the wings I had received

but my arms were naked, unable to fly.

Then I saw the angel transform into a comet

and the stern faces turned into stone,

their arms like the outline of branches

frozen in the gestures of another life,

their hands like leaves, their fingers like thorns.

Voices from the street, the sounds of people

took me away from the dream and brought me back to the present.

The image and its colors faded away

but the faint echo of a few words

was repeating the odd prayer of an angel

and maybe it was a dream, but I wasn't sleeping.

"He will be called the son of God"

Vague words in my mind,

fading in a dream, but imprinted in my womb.

And the exhausted words

dissolved in tears

but fear left the lips

and thickened in the eyes

half closed to fake

a serenity

that burns and waits

for a forgiving glance.

And you placed your fingers, softly

on the margin of her forehead.

Old men, if they want to caress,

are afraid of having heavy hands.

• Artist:Fabrizio De André
• Album:La buona novella (1970)