Arriba En La Cordillera
Patricio Manns
Up In The Mountain Range
What do you know about the mountain range
If you were born so far away?
You have to know the rock
That crowns the snowdrift
You have to quietly traverse
The shortcuts of silence
And cut through the edges
Of the lakes at the summit
My father spent his life
Among rocks and hills!
The white widow on his horse
The curse of the mule driver
That night my old man was taken
To steal someone else's cattle
Near the Atacalco pass
At the onset of winter
They asked him with blows
And he answered with silence
The mountain guards
Planted their cross in the wind
The angels of Santa Fe
Were names of hell
Even to my house came
The law looking for the cattle thief
My mother hid her face
When he didn't return from the hill
And up in the mountain range
The night entered his bones
He, who was so manly and alone
Led death in his herd
Today we crossed
With a good flock
Up in the mountain range
Not even the wind saw us pass
How proud he would love me
If he knew now!
But only the wind knows
Where my old man fell asleep
With his poor man's sorrow
And two bullets in his chest
