Figlio di ieri [English translation]

Who knows if you’re still able

to follow the wake of a felt-tip pen.

Who knows if you’ll become an old man

of sugar or of salt.

Wrinkles are crosswalks

where years will be able to cross [the street].

Wrinkles are the lines of a screw

that screws in not to let you wobble.

And the tears that have come from the day before yesterday,

you confuse them with hay fever,

while the sunset

makes crosswords on your eyes.

Down in the cellar you’re always looking for that picture,

and you do everything you can not to find it.

You’ve learned to tire those who wait for you,

you’ve learned to scare those who spy on you.

We who’ve been kings of something,

something that we don’t understand amidst a sea [of things] to remember,

now that we hide the stars,

[that] we’re no longer roses, and no longer thorns,

we prepare a blanket to the silence

while we light the fireplace.

And in the magician’s hat

there are cards that have lost their color.

Where are you going?

You still walk in the arms of the rain

with your troll-skin boots.

Where are you going?

Yesterday’s son.

Like dragons rummaging in the ice,

in the tub of these frozen foods,

and they said that there’s even a three-for-two,

and we’re vampires transformed for the weekend.

We get around with spare parts

for the dreams that went off the road.

The neon sausage is too hot,

and you can’t wait for the wave in the toilet.

The sons that we sent like postcards

will always bear the mark of the stamp,

and we would like mother-of-pearl roots,

and we end up with cellophane sheets.

Monna Lisa, vines, and women on the run,

and Christmas dinner at Autogrill,1

and somebody left their hope here too,

and many others [left] just bones and silicone.

We who’ve been kings of something,

something that we don’t understand amidst a sea [of things] to remember,

now that we hide the stars,

[that] we’re no longer roses, and no longer thorns,

we prepare a blanket to the silence

while we light the fireplace.

And in the magician’s hat

there are cards that have lost their color.

Where are you going?

You still walk in the arms of the rain

with your troll-skin boots.

Where are you going?

Yesterday’s son.

1. Autogrill is an Italian company of motorway service areas; so, it’s certainly not a suitable place for fancy dinners.