Canción Para Un Niño En La Calle

At this exact hour
There is a child on the street
There is a child on the street!

It is an honor for men to protect what grows
To ensure there is no scattered childhood on the streets
To prevent their heart from shipwreck
Their incredible adventure of bread and chocolate
By placing a star in place of hunger
Otherwise it's useless, otherwise it's absurd
To rehearse joy and song on earth
Because it's all worthless if there is a child on the street

All the toxic things of my country enter through my nose
I wash cars, shine shoes, smell glue and also smell crack
I steal wallets but I'm a good person, I'm a toothless smile
Rain without a roof, nail with dirt, I am what's left of the war
An empty stomach, I'm a knee hit that heals with the cold
The best tour guide of the slum, for three pesos I'll show you around the capital
I don't need a visa to fly around the roundabout because I play with paper planes
Rice with stones, mud with wine, and what I lack, I imagine

The world shouldn't walk with barefoot love
Waving a newspaper like a wing in hand
Climbing onto trains, exchanging laughter
Beating our chests with a tired wing
Life shouldn't walk, newly born, at a price
Childhood risking for a narrow profit
Because then hands are useless burdens
And the heart, barely, a bad word

When night falls, I sleep awake, one eye closed and the other open
In case the tigers spit a bullet at me, my life is like a circus but without a clown
I walk along the ditch juggling with 5 oranges
Asking for money from whoever I can, on a bicycle with a single wheel
I am oxygen for this continent, I am what the president neglects
Don't be scared if I have bad breath, if you see me shirtless with my nipples in the wind
I am just another element of the landscape, the street residues are my camouflage
Like something that exists that seems unreal, something lifeless but that breathes

Woe to those who have forgotten that there is a child on the street
That there are millions of children living on the street
And a multitude of children growing up on the street
I see them clutching their small hearts
Looking at all of us with fables in their eyes
A truncated lightning bolt crosses their gaze
Because no one protects that growing life
And love is lost, like a child on the street

Listen, at this exact hour there is a child on the street
There is a child on the street