Van Loon [English translation]

Van Loon1, a man destined form the start for a rough job

that his shoulders or his intelligence didn't want to bear

looked like he had been kissed by fortune

when he had to leave2

It looks like he never made history

but these things are always discovered later

and anyway, neither the eagle nor the mouse were ever given

the chance to choose their fate.

Then a single day leaves a mark on your entire future

or a war breaks it, like a stone thrown [against it]

but I know that sometimes a mouse can roar

and an eagle can fall.

For how many years, day after day, do we need to live with someone

to understand what they think, what they want, who they are?

[We all are] tourists of emptiness, explorers of no one

but our own "me".

Van Loon was alive and I believed him dead

or -even worse- useless, just because of the distance

between his idols, so different from mine, and my youth and pride of that time,

my ignorance.

What did I know about how much he had sailed

gallantly, like Caboto, on the foamy seas

of his days and how a shark had become

day after day, a freshwater fish.

Van Loon, Van Loon,

what do you carry inside, when

your mind rests and time finds peace?

Are you chasing a shadow or do you feel that peace inside you?

I'd like to know

what you see whan you look around,

faraway landscapes, or maybe this day

is enough for you, it's like a new gift for you?

Van Loon, Van Loon,

what are you thinking about in this September

of high mists that stain the Apennines

now that you have a lot of time to think, but about whom?

Go, old man, go,

don't be afraid, because everyone will have a motivation

and a justification,

even if we'll never know which one, never.

Now Van Loon is slowly getting ready for his last journey,

he, like any judicious man, packed up some time ago,

or better, his luggage is the one of simple and wise men,

that is, next to nothing.

And he'll leave for real, to a place or a story of his own,

with all the books life forbade him

with old friends he forgot about

with infinity.

[he'll go] where it's always summer in our mountains

or if one wants, it's a winter without troubles,

that creaks like frost under the studded

old shoes of his 18-year old self, of his 18-year old self.

1. H.W. Van Loon (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hendrik_Willem_van_Loon), Dutch writer of popular books aimed at children andyoung adults. In this case, he represents the author's father, a man who had many interests but not enough money to get formal advanced education 2. Guccini's father left home when the singer (born 1940) was just a baby to fight in World War II

• Artist:Francesco Guccini
• Album:Signora Bovary