Retrato de Sandino Con Sombrero

They say taciturn and dark,
as if carved in wood,
as if melted in a volcano,
Sandino was and from afar
sometimes he was confused
with the stillness of the thicket.
They say he was educated in the open air
and that he copied the way
of the mountain beasts to walk;
that's where he trained his gaze,
the calm, the lightness,
the agility of the jaguar.

There goes
the general,
a ray of light over the wheat field.
There goes
the general
like a star over the sea.

Sullen like dry clay,
like a rusty stone,
surly like coal,
that's how Sandino grew up in the rain,
tempering in the ancient earth
his fingers of a farmer.
He knew that those lands he touched
with his two beautiful hands
and wings of a sower
were a closed territory,
the cage where the sparrow slept
with its sparrow.

Seeing that the mountain did not move,
Sandino left for the mountain
one April morning.
From the mines of San Albino,
his sweet iron hoe
turned into a rifle.
They say there were thousands then
who rose from fear
upon seeing his profile pass by:
thus, Sandino entered the memory
of America, the brown one
I mean, my country.