Arriba En La Cordillera

What do you know about the mountain range
if you were born so far away
you have to know the rock
that crowns the snowfield,
you have to silently 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.

Los Angeles, Santa Fe
were names of hell
until the law reached my house
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
carries death in his herd.

The white widow on his horse
the curse of the muleteer
that night my old man took
to steal someone else's cattle.
Next to the Atacalpo pass
at the beginning of winter
they asked him with blows
and he answered with silence
the mountain guards
nailed his cross to the wind.

Today we crossed
with a good herd
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.

The Tree (Pablo Neruda - Rodolfo Parada)

Their heroes rise from the earth
like leaves through the sap
and the wind stirs the foliage
of noisy crowds
until the seed falls
of bread once again to the earth.
He drew saltpeter from the hammer
and extracted tears from the ground
he raised them through his branches
distributed them in his architecture:
They were the invisible flowers
sometimes buried flowers.

This is the tree of the free
the earth tree, the cloud tree,
the bread tree, the arrow tree,
the fist tree, the fire tree,
the stormy water drowns it
of our nocturnal era.
This is the tree of the free.

Look at its hair
touch its renewed rays
take your bread and your apple
take your heart and your horse
and stand guard at the border
at the edge of its leaves.