El Niño Y El Canario
Jorge Cafrune
The Boy and the Canary
The canary was a beauty,
And his owner was a little boy
who diligently watched over the singer's care.
He was a precious specimen,
with a damask color.
He was a resigned prisoner to the mission of singing.
It was sensitive to hear
from his sonorous throat
the deep note that cries
in a constant rolling.
It was clear from his singing
that he was suffering anguish
because lacking joy
his flute was a torment.
One day his owner,
the little pure-hearted boy who used to be enraptured
by contemplating the splendors of such divine colors and such beautiful singing,
took his complaint to the sky
because, trapped in the bars of the small prison,
his faithful canary was dying in slow and sad agony without understanding the reason.
Prisoner of deep sorrow,
tears rose to his eyes and with childlike emotion
he took the prisoner out of the cage, placed a kiss from his mouth
on the pink plumage
and in his trembling hand, a rose fell asleep that had a heart.
The wooden box, the same one that contained,
the same one that contained colored pencils,
was the final resting place
of the one who in his life had been, of the one who in his life had been his most precious value.
And in the garden of his house, at a very short distance, at a very short distance from a legendary walnut tree,
the poor creature wept, the poor creature wept
as he dug the grave of his unmatched singer.