Mermelada de Moras

Night owl cats court under the balcony.
Canaries from Las Ramblas, and a geranium without flowers.
Dancing down the street, the night finally left...
Where are you going, party girl, if 'El Molino' closed.

'Morning song': -Serrat on a transistor,
and a chorus of neighbors in the inner courtyard.-
'Morning song'. How far Aragon is!..
My house among the bushes, how do I forget you?...

Sunday morning, like at the eldest's house;
they will then go see Barça, and I with the granddaughter to the zoo.
St. George's morning, sad without a book or flower:
...When the princess loses, what does the dragon live for?

I don't know, but it lives, just like I do,
until a brute saint pierces us with his lance.
Lives in his cold cave, pondering what he lost:
Blackberry jam, memories of love.

Blackberries from the Pyrenees, where we were born:
she was thrown by a swamp, I wanted something better.
The world keeps turning, with her and me rolling...
in this dark apartment the rolling ended.

Eyes like blackberries, on St. John's night
a canopy of stars over Rosal Street.
The world turned in its fair, and we turned without thinking
that with each turn, the dance was getting closer to its end.

My old Pueblo Seco, -where I lived, I will die...-,
without losing what it was, made me a Barcelonan.
And now, one of my grandchildren is taking Aragonese courses,
blowing bagpipes... and intends to return.

He wants to join the Chunta, -...if I am from the C.N.T.!-;
he brings me the 'Fuellas', the 'Rolde', and 'The Aragonese Crusader'.
The world spins around! If only she could see it!...
The path that some take, others must undo.

Like every September since she's gone
I will climb to our valley... if they want to take me.
Next to the sunken house,-for her and for so many others-,
I will spit on the swamp!... and I will do it without crying.

Slowly, among the ruins, I will harvest in the marsh
blackberries like her eyes, sweet to the point of bursting.
It's not surprising that my daughter wants to ration them:
-'Father, that jam with its sugar is bad.'

-...If you knew that when eating it I see the house standing again,
and on your mother's lips a little drop of honey!
I hope you live long enough to discover why
while spreading jam you are my little girl again!

...that memory makes yesterday's hard bread tender.