Mi Mexico de Ayer

A very cute indigenous woman, had her clay stove on the sidewalk,
her black and clean griddle, frying tamales in lard
and thick tortillas of dough, unrefined sugar and cinnamon,
when leaving my house she bought a small bottle for school.

In the afternoon on the streets, they set up clean tables, old ladies,
they sold us their custards, rice pudding in their little pots;
delicious bread pudding, tejocotes in honey and at night a thick atole
so rich that there's nothing like it.

These beautiful things, as I saw them,
are no longer in my land, they are no longer here.
Today my Mexico is beautiful, like it never was,
but when I was a child my Mexico had a certain something...

Its cobblestone streets were calm, beautiful, and quiet,
the street vendors' calls cut through the clean air, selling buckets,
earth for the flowerpots, taffy, honey,
live maguey worms, mezcal in the agave leaf and aguamiel.

When the soldiers passed by, people came out to watch anxiously,
even the mule train stopped to listen to the trumpet.
The horse-drawn carriages stopped, only the faithful old man
who sold sugar candies improvised that verse:
"Sugar candies for half a cent and a cent,
for the children who want to buy..."

These beautiful things, as I saw them,
are no longer in my land, they are no longer here.
Today my Mexico is beautiful, like it never was,
but when I was a child my Mexico had a certain something...