The days are long and dull counting other people's money.
I long to share the toil of those who till the fields,
Their shirts wet with sweat, mine clean and dry,
Sitting here as I do inside an air conditioned room
Full of bookshelves containing facts and figures
Rhyming the beat of the mystical individual wealth
Of all our clientele who come now and then to caress
Those sheets of paper, with hands in white gloves,
That glisten in the darkness of the golden vaults
Where the lightning and thunder strike the hearts
Of the human morass, the unyielding force of mirrors
And faith in the innate superiority of the naked truth.
There is your hyperbole: the sleeping minstrel's dream.
The key to the highway turns and the motor burns
One is coming and the other is going the other way
Like some futuristic prophets singing out of tune;
For the astronauts skirting around the silvery moon,
Words that design a thousand and one fantasies,
How freedom can sometimes seem a bit too much,
When people ponder the yardstick of the common market
Regardless of how actions affect everyone differently
In those minutes when houses are traded in the moors.
The key to the highway turns and the motor burns
The sun is setting at the end of yet another day.
ROMA, 13 1 2017
