El Gordo triste

For his look, a poet like a slick sparrow,
for his voice, a cat on hidden plates,
the mysteries of wine caress his eyes
and a pain perfumes his collar and the stars.

The fierce eagle screams as it lands on his fingers
calling the children to the crest of dreams:
"Cry like the wind, with tears held high!"
"Sing like the people, through milonga and weeping!"

With an archangel and a thug by his side,
they leave with their glasses like two puddles,
to see for whom the wisterias grieve,
Pichuco of the bridges in silence.

By the grace of dying every night,
he never meets a fair death,
never do the stars feel loose,
Pichuco of the mass in the markets.

What lunfardo Shakespeare has this man escaped
who saw a match in the rising storm,
who walks straight on crooked stands,
who organizes bandstands for moonless dogs?

There will never be a porteño so savvy at dawn,
with his sad trees that fall while standing.
Who repeats this race, this race of one,
but who repeats it with all the struggles?

For a streetwise aristocracy,
he's only been skinny with himself.
Time is fat too, and it doesn’t seem so,
Pichuco of the hands like courtyards.

And now that the waters are calmer
and inside his accordion, kids sing,
remember and dream and live, sweet fat man,
loved by us. By us.