Ho Conosciuto il Dolore

I’ve known pain
Up close, you know
And it’s known me too
We’ve been friends forever
I’ve never lost it
And it hasn’t either
In fact, it feels like it’s done for
If, for just one day
It doesn’t see me or hear me

I’ve known pain
And it seemed ridiculous
When I elbow it
When I say to its face
"Who are you trying to scare?"

I’ve known pain
And it was the sick child
The girl lost on the horizon
The strangled dream
The world’s indifference to hunger
To poverty, to life
The thug in the corner
Hiding, a coward, beaten cancer
God, who wasn’t there
And swore he was, oh how he swore, he was there
And he wasn’t

I’ve known pain
And I’ve hit it with songs and words
To make it tremble
To make it pale
To make it go back to the corner
So full of bruises
So battered, dazed, wrapped up
So fucked up that at the sound of the gong
It jumped out of the ring and never came back
Never to be seen again

Then I stopped it in a bar
Where nobody even knew it
I stopped it to say
"You can’t do anything to me!"

I’ve known pain
And I felt sorry for it
For its loneliness
For its spider-like fingers
For being condemned to its trade
Condemned to its pain

I looked it in the eyes
That are chasms and tears
Of shattered dreams, interrupted breaths
Last stars of desperate lovers
"Do you want to stop for a moment?" I asked it
"Come on, do you want to stop hiding? Want to sit down?
For once, listen to me!! Listen to me
And don’t say a word!"

You did everything
To disarm my life
And you don’t know, you can’t know
That you pass by me like a thin, brushing shadow
Barely touching
And you have no way out
Because, in the learned heart
In this waiting
Even in just one moment
The emotion of friends leaving
Children being born
Dreams racing in my present
I am alive
And you, my pain
Don’t mean a fucking thing

I met you, pain, on a winter night
One of those nights that feel like a day
But among the invisible, burnt-out stars
I am a man
And you are nothing at all.