Desde el exilio

Here are my daughters by my side again;
I've hung the pictures, gathered my books,
I've conquered bread again and I've cried
indeed, so many times! but I've also lived.

My souls have not yet left my land
nor have the verses I will write someday been born,
when the clenched fist and the calm heart
rhyme hatred and love with honor and joy.

Not much time has passed for the disgust to cease
for the confusion of the few to turn
into certainty and for those who do not appear today
to show up, wielding their personal face, a strike

a victim, a Thursday, a tortured man,
an unforgettable dead, a raped woman,
an unresolved matter, or wielding a sin
to death. I swear: my verses are nothing.

But I have lived. I have been, of the most, naive
a singer out in the world with a few photos,
a book, memories written in notebooks
that speak of me. History is being made by others.

I didn't even want to know about our dead,
their names, nor the days they ended.
I checked in two suitcases at the sad airport
as if my closed heart was in them.

I had been living, metaphysical and slow,
not understanding much of what was happening;
I thought that by rhyming pain with suffering
I was warding off the soldier-police sect.

I arrived in Spain in September, thinking that Pacheco
as an ambassador, servant of our enemies,
was still the subject of my song: I have
only a voice and a strong heart as a witness.

And of course it was of no use. The intelligence
of Spain and my reputation as a dangerous singer,
in a new Spain turned into a Court,
made me a prisoner, guilty by default.

And Pacheco was not my enemy, nor was I
a carrier of anything other than my conscience
and in my conscience were and still await me,
the voice of our People, their ardor and innocence.

Justice is not a pledge that some conquer
to multiply it like miraculous bread.
Justice is work, courage and fasting,
Love and Light that ignite victorious Peoples!

We have not triumphed, it's true. I triumphed much less;
as a singer I have been nothing more than a famous man,
discographic, murky in error, a thunder
out of tune, sometimes a thunderous thunder.

But our Uruguay, Artigas' Uruguay,
will rise among the sabers that are now solid gold,
and this will happen very soon, not because I say so
but because our rebellious People say so.

Once again I have seen that protagonism
ends for many people; it is pure bourgeoisie
to think that the paths to socialism
begin in a book, a group, a theory.

Any countryman knows that when it is necessary
to win a 'good', the rest can be given without anything,
but the opponent's cards must be known
and have the loaded gun in hand.

Those of us outside, comrades, we suffer.
The game is played and we know
what needs to be known; we were never 'gone' or 'left'
and we will play together 'the best of the best'.

There are many of us in France, in Holland, in Spain.
I write to you now from Mexican land,
but these verses are born where the entrails
of our People, conceive the History of tomorrow.

Recently 'Pedro' died in Nicaragua.
Just yesterday the clandestine newspapers arrived
from Uruguay. Today, Monday, the city of Managua
welcomes me and extends Sandino's hand to me.

Because from the past comes a thread of blood,
it rises from autumn to the fist of summer.
In fear and anger, in death and hunger
life is sowing our near triumph.

We will return the departed and the newly arrived,
Uruguayans born in other springs,
who bring in their eyes their painted birds,
the certainty of light, punctual, that awaits us!

Mexico - Managua February 1980.

(The text presented is a faithful transcription of how it was published in the insert of the 1980 album Political Texts)