María Coraje [English translation]

She's 106 years old and her hair is snow white

She has a black dress and black wood earrings

Her hard body gave birth to fifteen children

and she breastfeeded thirteen of the same breast.

The war took three, they got lost in the mountains.

The homeland took them, sang the mailman with victorious air.

She spent five days without seeing the sky.

Her condemn was always, always the silence.

She had a miner son and a bloody evening

they brought him covereed in blood and mud.

With the calm pace she went up to the black well

and when she reached the door she lost her look and spit at the floor

with a frown she went down to the town

and spent five days without seeing the sky.

Her eyes get sweeter when she remembers her first kiss,

when she wore dress for the first time for the first grandson baptism

and the newlywed trip and her fear

of going to the bedroom with her man.

He got tired one day of being awake

when the field was showing its new mantle.

She has a poet son, a carpenter and three at Mexico

other two in the mine, a friar and the youngest,

who always was very handsome and pluperfect,

today he's a tender greenhouse flower.

She shelters all of them under her cape

and remembers their names and their birthdays.

• Artist:Victor Manuel
• Album:Quiero abrazarte tanto (1970)