Il Pensionato [English translation]

I can smell it from beyond the wall that every sound can make it’s way through

The almost poor smell of food

I see it in the light that I also remember well

Of a dim bulb, the one with thirty candles

Among furniture which has never seen any other splendour

Old newspapers and corners filled with dust and smells,

Among the used and strange sounds of it’s daily rituals

Eating, clearing, then washing plates and hands.

I feel it when I come home tired and late in the morning

Opening the shutter, pulling the curtain

And while I’m smoking one more cigarette

He goes slowly, in slippers, towards the day that awaits him

And then I meet him again when my time comes

His ancient courtesy gives me absurd pleasure

“Good morning professor, how is your wife?

And the cats? And this weather that hasn’t gotten better yet…”

She tells me a hundred times between the garden grids

Of her dead cat, of a quarrel with the neighbours

And he tells me softly, in his hushed tone

Of when he and Bologna were younger than they are now…

I listen and my thoughts run after his life

To all the faces seen by the old bulb

To the usual smell of dust and mould

To all the soups heated on the stove

To that tick-tock of an alarm clock that emphasises every second

To how from that place one can see the world

To an existence lived in so many hard days of the same

How even history has passed between those walls…

I listen and I don’t understand and everything around me astonishes me

Life, how it is and how one manages it

And the thousand way and times, then the possibilities

The choices, the changes, the fates, the needs

And still I wonder if he was ever happy

If he ever had a doubt, if only today he slumbers

If he had a doubt a few times or often

If it was enough to survive by himself…

But then I realise that it’s probably just the worries

Of one who has so much time and also the luxury of wasting it

I can’t or don’t know at all if it’s worse

In the end, his loneliness or mine…

Perhaps one day we will say “but if he was so well…

He’ll have the marble with the angel breaking the chains

With a little money saved up because you never know

A little out of habit, who is always ready for trouble”

We’ll see new faces, voices with dull smiles

“Pleasure”, “It’s mine”, “How do you do?”, “Were you related to him?”

And little by little it will go from our full minds

Only an impression that we shall barely remember…