L'anno che verrà

The speaker writes to a distant friend to ease his own mind and describe a troubled present. People stay indoors, some protect their windows with sandbags, and weeks pass in silence. Against this tense, lonely mood, the speaker reports cheerful promises about the coming year. The song gradually suggests that these promises may be less a confident forecast than a way to keep going: imagining change helps people laugh and hope.

The future is pictured through exaggerated images: Christmas celebrations lasting all day, birds returning, and food and light being available throughout the year. These images suggest abundance, peace, and a world made whole. The claim that even people who cannot speak will speak, while deaf people already do, is playful and deliberately illogical. It makes the promised transformation feel like a comic fantasy rather than a practical plan.

The speaker’s enthusiasm is therefore mixed. He says he is glad to be alive in this moment, but the surrounding hardship has not disappeared, and the promised new year may simply give way to another year. His laughter does not necessarily mean he believes every prediction. It may be a form of resilience: by inventing an absurdly bright future, he finds a reason to hope and to value the present. The song leaves open whether change will truly come, while emphasizing the importance of being here now.