Al Comandante Ernesto Che Guevara

(Poem turned into a ballad)

Words don't understand what's going on:
The loud ones, the dark ones, the docile ones,
the ones that call things by their name,
the ones that invent the name of things;
the words I said or were said to me,
the ones I learned from books,
the ones I write,
the ones I thought of while looking out a window,
the ones that, approaching silence, scream;
the ones that, touching fire, let off steam,
the ones that exchange trills and thunder,
the ones that set the table in my house,
the ones with clear calligraphy falling down the school walls,
the ones that say in unison the fish and the bird;
the words I had or didn't have
to call the world and make it come,
the ones that weave a meticulous thread
that goes from balconies to mouths,
and from mouths to history, and they pass,
the ones that spend the night among papers,
or climb the insomniac's stairs,
and blindly enter his dream;
the ones that organize the noise in the corners,
the ones that sweep away the vomit of rage,
the ones that jump from femur to the moon,
the ones that cut the scorching shadow,
the ones that carve a name in a stone
to better perpetuate oblivion,
the ones that descend to the tree through the air
and climb to the sky through the trunk,
the ones that chew on a slow crab,
the ones that announce the end of Lent,
the ones that steal sleep from the killer
and let him sleep and stand guard,
the ones that don't bleed, even if wounded,
the ones that don't die, even if killed;
the ones that steal future through a funnel,
the ones that manage myths and virtues,
the ones that have dealings with the wind,
the ones that warn of incinerated water,
the ones that open the lips of the earth
seeking the astrolabe of your scream,
the ones that tell you, not believing you hear:
- Fight again, Ramón, even if you die...
Words don't understand what's going on.