La copla de los números
Rolando Alárcon
The Ballad of Numbers
At one I get up,
at two I'm looking for you,
at three in the morning
four roosters are singing.
At five I jump,
at six I get on a boat,
at seven you go to mass
to pray eight praises.
At nine you go to the water,
ten sighs you will give
for the eleven letters of mine
that at twelve you will find.
Thirteen were my siblings,
fourteen were my neighbors,
fifteen shots we took
for a sixteenth of July.
Seventeen policemen
are looking for eighteen thieves
who in the park on a nineteenth
stole twenty planks.
They had them for twenty-one days
in twenty-two jail cells,
twenty-three sticks they were given
at the twenty-four wakes.
Twenty-five regiments
fought on the twenty-sixth,
twenty-seven generals,
twenty-eight dead by law,
twenty-nine signed
thirty sheets of paper.
Thirty-one pacts they made,
the thirty-two backwards.