Contramarca

Of gaucho lineage, like all of Brancatti's poetry, this tango
is literarily constructed on a metaphor that likens the
countermark - or second mark - of cattle with the fact that a
woman leaves a man for another and then tries to return to the
first. It was recorded by Carlos Gardel, with guitar accompaniment (3/30); later recorded by Jorge Duran, with the Florio-Duran orchestra (1959). It was also recorded by Julio Sosa, Roberto
Goyeneche, Luis Felipelli, Juan Carlos Godoy, among others.

In the long sowing of my years
half Indian for love
I was always dodging
the claws of love...
But, you crossed my path
and that afternoon for pain,
with your Creole eyes you pierced me...
And under the yoke of affection
I went full
being good,
confident and noble,
feeling poorer
than spiders,
after falling for your tricks
I fell under your lasso.

Cruel woman!... What have you come for?
What are you looking for in this ranch?
If you were forgotten by me
and my gaucho heart
now lives wider.
And that flower that my knife
marked you well deserved,
you will carry it proudly in the cart
so that you never in your life
forget your betrayal.

In the old danger of my soul
don't come to get tangled up.
You have a countermark.
You are foreign to this corral,
so hurry up and leave
for your good or your bad,
and get lost in the pasture where you were.
With one button for show
I have enough
and I have a lot of endurance
to fall again.
I swear I beg you,
that next to the tiger
it's easy for foxes like you to be in danger...