About a Song
An unforgettable “trobador cubano” wrote like a miracle:
De que callada manera se me adentra usted sonriendo
Como si fuera la primavera, yo muriendo, yo muriendo
Quien le dijo que yo era risa siempre nunca llanto
Como si fuera la primavera no soy tanto
I tried to translate them, explain them and even draw them on a sad piece of paper but nothing worked. I accepted the fact that I would never be able to fully communicate the feeling behind these lines to the person I loved at the time. The song that carries these lines, like many poems of my youth, ended up buried and forgotten in my memory for the best part of twenty years until one night not long ago it reappeared inside a train car in Berlin. What strange twist of fate put me inside a train in Berlin of all places where the music system was playing the song I will never know. Abruptly I went back in time, much like Proust and his “madelaine”; hearing those lines I could only think of one person from my past, the same person with the dark eyes of emotion, the one I know understands them. The heart is a strange friend because it doesn’t let us lie to ourselves but it lets us lie to others. The places where the lines are sung and read remain vast in the world and the poet should know that there are people like this humble writer who are still in love with these few words and that there are still women who are worthy of them, who become them, who fill the spaces between them and who give meaning to their beautiful gathering.
