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Il suonatore Jones

Fabrizio De André
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Fiddler Jones, Edgar Lee Masters
IONAS CANTOR

In pulvirulento vortice
videbant alli siccitatem,
in eo ego videbam
Iohannulae limum
in antiquis festivis choreis.

Meae terrae audiebam
sonitus vibrationesque:
meum cor erat.
Cur ergo eam colam rursus?
Melius mī non apparebat.

Libertatem vidi
dormientem in agris cultis
caelō pecuniisque,
caelō amorēque,
filō spinis instructō protectis

Libertatem surgentem vidi
quotiescumque sonarem
puellis in choreā
fremitantibus,
alicui ebrio sodali.

Item, cum homines sciant,
et bene omnes sciunt te ad cantum peritum,
tibi erit canendum
totum vitae cursum,
te delectat hominum auditio,

Ad finem pervēni in incultis agris,
ad finem cum meā tibiā fractā,
ridens raucā vocē
quanta commemoravi!
Et nihil desideravi.
THE EARTH keeps some vibration going
There in your heart, and that is you.
And if the people find you can fiddle,
Why, fiddle you must, for all your life.
What do you see, a harvest of clover?
Or a meadow to walk through to the river?
The wind’s in the corn; you rub your hands
For beeves hereafter ready for market;
Or else you hear the rustle of skirts
Like the girls when dancing at Little Grove.
To Cooney Potter a pillar of dust
Or whirling leaves meant ruinous drouth;
They looked to me like Red-Head Sammy
Stepping it off, to “Toor-a-Loor.”
How could I till my forty acres
Not to speak of getting more,
With a medley of horns, bassoons and piccolos
Stirred in my brain by crows and robins
And the creak of a wind-mill—only these?
And I never started to plow in my life
That some one did not stop in the road
And take me away to a dance or picnic.
I ended up with forty acres;
I ended up with a broken fiddle—
And a broken laugh, and a thousand memories,
And not a single regret.


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