Il suonatore Jones di Fabrizio De Andrè Edgar Lee Masters
Spoon River Anthology / The Musician Jones
Translation by Fernanda Pivano
The earth stirs
vibrations in your heart: it’s you.
And if people know you can play,
playing touches you, for your whole life.
What do you see, a harvest of clover?
Or a wide meadow between you and the river?
In the millet it's the wind; you rub your hands
because the oxen will be ready for market;
or you happen to hear the rustle of skirts
like at the Grove when the girls dance.
For Cooney Potter a pile of dust
or a swirl of leaves meant drought;
to me it seemed it was Sammy Red-Head
when he stepped to the tune of Toor-a-Loor.
How could I till my lands,
let’s not talk about expanding them –
with the racket of horns, bassoons, and piccolos
that crows and robins stirred in my head,
and the creak of a windmill – just this?
Not once did I put my hands to the plow,
that someone didn’t stop in the road
and ask me for a dance or a snack.
I ended up with the same lands,
I ended with a broken violin –
and a hoarse laugh and memories,
and not even a regret.
A passage (at least in part) autobiographical despite being taken from Edgar Lee Masters?
