lament
Virgen de las angustias
Now the corpse that was your child
Has fluttered to your lap
Your carved pain is forever.
Virgen de las angustias
All the living faces that come here,
The faces of women in solemn grief,
They also hang down with heavy eyes.
Virgen de las angustias
Your tears are forever welling,
Welling over the saddest of journeys,
And the bell in an empty cage.
Virgen de las angustias
The candles lit with slow care
Flicker and tremble in the darkness
To reveal a soldier here, a bird there.
Virgen de las angustias
and elsewhere mothers wailing
This poor body, punctured and broken
Dies again, and again, and again.
Oh were your sorrows just wood
And this verse not a perch for tears.