La buona novella II

This is another fragment of de André's "Good News". In it Mary tells Joseph about her conception of Jesus.

"In the womb of the temple, wet and dark dark,
the shadows were cold, incense-swollen;
the angel came down, like every evening,
to teach me a new prayer.
Then, suddenly, he unclasped my hands
and my arms became wings.
When he asked me "Do you know the summer?"
I ran, for a day, for an instant,
to see the color in the wind.

We truly flew, over the houses,
beyond gates, gardens and streets.
Then we slid among valleys in bloom
where grapevines hug olive trees.

We came down there, where the day gets lost
looking for itself in the greenery.
The angel spoke, as if praying,
and at the end of each prayer
he counted out a vertebra in my spine.

The priests's long shadows
pushed the dream into a circle of voices.
I thought to escape with my wings from before
but my arms were naked, and i could not fly.
Then i saw the angel become a comet
and the severe faces became stone,
their arms, the outline of branches
in the still postures of another kind of life:
their hands, leaves; their fingers, thorns.

Voices from the street, the sounds of people,
stole me from the dream and gave me back to the present.
The image vanished, color was extinguished,
but the far away echo of short words
repeated the strange prayer of an angel.
Maybe it was a dream, but it wasn't sleep.

"They'll call him the son of God."
Blurry words in my mind,
vanished in the dream, but present in my womb."

And the words, tired,
dissolved into tears.
The fear in the lips
was collected in the eyes
half-closed in the semblance
of a calmness
that is actually burning up, waiting
for an indulgent look.

And you slowly placed your fingers
at the edge of her forehead:
when they caress, old people
are afraid of being too rough.