La Città Vecchia

In the neighborhoods where the good Lord's sun doesn't shine
He's already too busy warming up the people from other places
A girl sings the ancient song of the whore
What you still don't know, you will only learn here in my arms

And if at her age she lacks competence
Soon she will refine her skills with experience
Where have the times gone when it took a bit of vocation
To do the job properly for Juno

One leg here, one leg there, swollen with wine
Four half-poisoned retirees at the table
You will find them there, with the passing of time, summer and winter
Drinking heavily, cursing women, time, and the government

They seek happiness there, inside a glass
To forget they were taken for a ride
There will be joy even in agony with strong wine
They will wear on their faces the shadow of a smile in the arms of death

Old professor, what are you looking for in that doorway
Perhaps the only one who can teach you a lesson
The one you call with disdain 'public wife' during the day
The one who sets the price for your desires at night

You will search for her, you will call her for more than one night
You will wake up defeated, postponing everything to the twenty-seventh
When you collect, you will squander half of your pension
Ten thousand lire to hear yourself called a handsome kitty and a big baby

If you venture along the quays of the old docks
In that thick air full of salt, swollen with smells
There you will find thieves, murderers, and the strange type
The one who sold his mother to a dwarf for three thousand lire

If you think, if you judge like a good bourgeois
You will sentence them to five thousand years plus expenses
But if you understand, if you search for them thoroughly
If they are not lilies, they are still children, victims of this world