La Majada Del Diablo

Ladies and gentlemen
Good evening to ya
Come closer to the harp 'cause I wanna greet ya
I bring my throat
Worn out from singing

But I still have a bit of cunning and skill
This name that I have
Was given to me by my mom
In homage to the scent of purple basil that left me orphaned in the world

When I started to crawl
My cradle was the savannah and my books were loneliness
My father was the Arauca drawer
Who taught me how to walk
I remember when I was young, I bought a guitar on credit
And I traveled from town to town with my trusty guitar
I think I didn't leave a bar where they didn't hear me sing
And my fame grew until one early morning with a black-haired, chesty man
They made me sing

This was in Villavicencio on the way to Bogotá
The man they brought me
Was truly skilled

He had more letters than a book and knew how to manage them
He was a black man with golden teeth and a red tongue
Not even the chief of police knew his identity
We went verse by verse in a cunning duel
I didn't lose sight of him, didn't let him think
I looked for him in the commotion, changed his tone
And the black man responded with ease
With adjectives and verbs, I set a trap

From the beginning, he told me
The multiplication tables
Division and addition
And also subtraction

He was good at geography, better at manners
He knew more grammar than a graduated girl
He spoke of Sucre and Bolívar
Of Pichincha and Boyacá
And of Christopher Columbus, but already in the early morning

There was a moment when the black man
Had a wrinkled face
He searched for the rhyme in the air and couldn't find it
'That's yours, Juan Fernando,' a voice spoke
If you want to outsmart him with just your throat
The wisdom teeth in that duel, that of the herd
That voice brought life to my tired throat
I felt it fresh like drizzling palm leaves

When the black man recovered
He snatched the pick
He told me he brought me a report with no news
And that he was more dangerous than a hidden snake
And if I wanted to wait, he wanted to remind me
That the man with a tail carries a tied tongue

And he put the bolts on the herd's pen
Put in the 5 bolts, I want to see them closed
He put the 10 crosses
2 on each cross
I don't accept a pen with the door unlocked
The black man changed color
Couldn't answer me

I faced him head-on, he hung his head
When I mentioned the crosses, he was so scared
That he took seven ribbons and wires in retreat
People everywhere were bursting with excitement
Since the mysterious man who wanted to transform
Against the Moon's profile, turned into a flame
And disappeared from our sight in that darkness