His father's love for French and Russian classics made him read and appreciate Proust, Dickens, Dostoevskij and when his cousin Giandomenico Guarino, knowledgeable about contemporary literature and poetry, found shelter in Sant'Ambrogio too after 8 September 1943 armistice, Raboni met the works by Piovene, Buzzati, Ungaretti, Quasimodo, Cardarelli, and Montale about whom he said: "I know I owe much to Montale, I realise this upon rereading him, even if I did not love him as much as Eliot and Sereni, but he affected me a lot... especially his expression of the limits, of the fact that we cannot demand too much in 20th century of poetry as a source of truth.

In 1961 he published two short poetry collections, Il catalogo è questo and L'insalubrità dell'aria, followed by Le case della Vetra in 1966, Cadenza d'inganno in 1975, Nel grave sogno in 1982 and, in 1988, the anthology A tanto caro sangue.

Ma così come hanno fatto, abbattere case, distruggere quartieri, qui e altrove (la Vetra, Fiori Chiari, il Bottonuto), a cosa serve?[...]

Raboni was interested in theater too: was in the directorial committee of Piccolo Teatro di Milano and wrote several plays, such as Alcesti o la recita dell'esilio and Rappresentazione della croce (2000).

His activity as a poet went on with Canzonette mortali (1987), Versi guerrieri e amorosi (1990), Ogni terzo pensiero (1993, with which he won the Viareggio Prize for poetry[4]), Quare tristis (1998), and Barlumi di Storia (2002).