Papa Cuéntame Otra Vez

Dad, tell me again that beautiful story
of policemen and fascists, and students with bangs,
and sweet urban guerrilla in bell-bottom pants,
and songs by the Rolling Stones, and girls in miniskirts.

Dad, tell me again all the fun you had
spoiling the old age of rusty dictators,
and how you sang 'Al Vent' and occupied the Sorbonne
in that French May during the days of wine and roses.

Dad, tell me again that beautiful story
of that crazy guerrilla fighter they killed in Bolivia,
and whose rifle no one dared to take again,
and how since that day everything seems uglier.

Dad, tell me again that after so many barricades
and so many raised fists and so much spilled blood,
at the end of the game you couldn't do anything,
and under the cobblestones there was no sandy beach.

The defeat was very harsh: everything that was dreamed
rotted in the corners, covered in cobwebs,
and no one sings 'Al Vent' anymore, there are no more crazies, no more outcasts,
but it still has to rain, the square is still dirty.

That May is far away, Saint Denis is far away,
Jean Paul Sartre is far away, that Paris is far away,
however, sometimes I think that in the end it didn't matter:
the blows keep falling on those who speak too much.

And the same dead, rotten with cruelty, continue.
Now they die in Bosnia, those who died in Vietnam.
Now they die in Bosnia, those who died in Vietnam.
Now they die in Bosnia, those who died in Vietnam.