De Árbol a Árbol
Joan Manuel Serrat
From Tree to Tree
Surely the newspapers
Will not ask
Will the trees
Be supportive?
Let's say the olive tree from Jaén
With the stubborn quebracho from Entre Ríos?
Or the sad willow from Tacuarembó
With the chestnut tree from Campos Elíseos?
What will they reveal from tree to tree?
Will the holm oak from Westphalia
Warn the emaciated larch from Tyrol
To better manage its turpentine?
Surely the newspapers
Will not ask
Will the trees
Be supportive?
Will the ombú tree in its humid pampa
Feel a brother to the Antillean ceiba?
Will those from that forest and those from that garden
Exchange insects and leaf litter?
Will they tell each other, cup to cup, that the mistletoe
Once so sacred among the Gauls
Used bark suckers
Like the least cordial of parasites?
Will the Lebanese cedars finally know
That their voracious and sadistic enemy
Is not the gray ebony from Cameroon
Nor the bastard myrtle nor the Moorish
Nor the linear palm from Camagüey
But the axes of the loggers
The saws of the big timber companies
The lightning as a whip in the night
