Mãe velha

Hair was black.
How smooth was the face!
Your body was a flower.

Hair was black.
But today, Old Mother,
hair turned white,
frost and August
that didn't lift.

How smooth was the face!

Now, Old Mother,
wrinkled face
seems like the fruits
that time dried up.

Your body was a flower.
But today, Old Mother,
what remains of the flower?
Just a drooping stem
that life left behind.

The hair color
transferred to the dress.

The plow of tears
on the smooth body
that founded and plowed!

The drooping stem
bent towards the earth,
and the earth claims
what is missing from the flower.

- Dad went to war!
the kid would say.
Old Mother was a young woman
in the time that passed.

But then came the news:
- Your man died,
with a red scarf
and a spear in hand.

And the men passed by
on thin horses,
with bushy beards,
torn ponchos,
with the girl's sorrow,
with the anger of war,
that kills a gaucho
to raise a hero.

Old Mother - was a young woman -
cried many tears
into her apron!
Opened the oratory
in the ranch room,
prayed the Our Father
for the soul of the man
that war took away,
with a red scarf
and a spear in hand.

And the Virgin Mary,
her Son in her arms,
watched the young mother
Old Mother become.
And life watched
Old Mother live:

- dawn in the cattle pen,
white milk in the mug,
kettle hissing on the stove,
habit makes mate.
Wooden bowl, white flour,
oven lit, knead bread,
lean jerky in the pot,
cornmeal, pound in the mortar,
basil in the window,
broom spinning on the floor...

And life demanded
a penny by penny.
Old Mother, older,
paid to time
the interest of the day.
A setting sun
was another coin.

The kid became a man.
Old Mother afraid of the revolution.
One day, finally,
the kid left
following a bugle.
Just like his father:
with a red scarf
and a spear in hand.

The girl grew up.
Left in the dress
of flowery chintz
that her mother sewed.
Then... got lost.

Old Mother crying
for what life did to her,
in the old oratory
now prays for three.

The night speaks
in the mouth of the night,
life is mute,
has no mouth.

That's why life
no one understands,
Old Mother, no one.
Life, Old Mother,
who is mother and woman.