La última grela

From the depths of things and wrapped in a shawl
of cold, with the gesture of someone who has died a lot,
will come the last tough guy, fatal, slick, and alone,
tapping through the dark pampa of cigarette butts.

With wine and bread from the saddest tango that Arolas
silenced next to the tired mud of his forehead,
the bandoneons and violins will give him his real mass,
tapping softly, so mysteriously.

They will bid farewell to his weariness, his cough, his melodrama,
the pale blondes from a Tuñón tale,
and behind the sleepless doorways, the ladies
with tragic manes will say his last rites.

And a muffled clearing of the throat and nonsense,
tangoing in his soul will burn his voice,
and mute and on his knees he will sell himself without desire,
lifeless, and for two bucks, to the mercy of God.

He will bring forgetfulness with him; and there in the trash heaps
of dawn, evil, in mourning, with four dark kisses,
will make a cross of laughter and a chorus of old thieves
very old his strange stories in slang.

How lonely the tough guy will go, so last and so strange,
his big sad eyes deceived by fate,
will be on the worn-out tablecloth of his face,
the two mournful aces loaded with death.