Diez Décimas de Saludo Al Público Argentino [English translation]

There in my fields there is people

Called "don't forget me";

Whoever knows them should keep

Their memory as a gemstone,

Because there are oblivions that burn

And there are memories that make things big,

Things that don't seem like it

Like the floating ice floe,

Underneath they are giants

Submerged and shaking.

My people is a calm sea

Under a stormy sky:

In its slow life beat

The rackets of the thunder.

It could conceive in its breast

The old days warriors

And when the time comes,

Tomorrow will be able also

To nail by its will

A thousand stars in the dawn

There's no rushless thing

Like a people making history

They're not seduced by the glory

Neither imagine the future

They walk with sure step,

Calculating every step

And what it seems backwardness

Soon uses to transform

Into things that for the fool

Are cause of his failure

My people isn't argentinian,

Neither paraguayan, nor southern;

They're called "eastern people"

Because of it's destiny.

But it walks the road

Of its loved brothers,

The one of so many humilliated,

The one of Latin America,

The blood whose veins

Also beat in it's side.

My people wasn't absent

Even less with the back turned

On the tragic and bitter

History of the continent.

We were a balcony facing

A ruined tenant house

-The one of Latin America

Frustrated in bad loves-,

Harvesting some flowers

Between Brazil and Argentina.

But didn't last long

The flowers in the balcony,

The quarrelsome and his reckless

Ambition, cut them down.

And were the same hands

That ruined the orchard,

And finished it,

The ones that today show, greedfully,

Instead of a bouquet of roses

Some paper flowers.

There's always the stupid

Nostalgic of the garden,

But among everyone the mean

Is the one who brought the thief;

He has no forgiveness:

If they protect their profits,

Decency and ignorance

Of the people are his love;

He can't find better reasons

To buy another estate.

Than one, is not eastern,

Neither gringo, neither brazilian;

His passion is money

Because he's multinational.

Universal liar

Since Hernandarias came,

He thinks of his bank accounts

Weighting the poets

Who make with foolish receipts

Lavish songs.

So, there won't be a way

We don't walk together.

We deal the same issue

Easterns and Argentinians,

Ecuatorians, Fuegians

Venezuelans, Cusquenians;

White, black and indians

Forged in the work,

We were born from the same segment

Of the tree of our dreams.

And now receive, sirs,

A brotherly salute;

My eastern people say:

Better times will come.

Cifra of our loves

Homeland poncho in the scare

About my people and their sorrows

I can't talk about,

I just meant to give you

Their heart with my song.

• Artist:Alfredo Zitarrosa
• Album:Zitarrosa 74 (1974)