Music, Spanish and a Puzzle

It just seemed so much that Mom was in pain the other evening. Her muscles were clenched, her face in grimace, her body jerking. One of the caregivers attending Mom asked me if I would please go home, I didn't need to be seeing Mom like that, she said. I wanted to help, so I called Hospice. The nurse relayed to me that rather than experiencing the type of pain we might associate with trauma, Mom was having a kind of seizure. It was cold comfort.

I reported back to Mnembre, the caregiver what I had been told. In her thick East African accent she asked: "This life, David- what has it's meaning?"

When I got home that evening the song Guantanmera was running through my head. The spot where Mom (is sat) is near the CD player, and I've been playing the houses' music library for her. Mom sang songs in German, she sang the Hebrew words to Hava Nagila, and she knew the words to Guantanamera. I looked up the translation tonight, it's a delightful and pragmatic sentiment:


Yo soy un hombre sincero
De donde crece la palma
Y antes de morirme quiero
Echar mis versos del alma
Guantanamera, guajira, Guantanamera

I am an honest man
From where the palm tree grows
And before dying I want
To share the verses of my soul.

Mi verso es de un verde claro
Y de un carmín encendido
Mi verso es de un ciervo herido
Que busca en el monte amparo
Guantanamera, guajira, Guantanamera

My verse is light green
And it is flaming crimson
My verse is a wounded deer
Who seeks refuge in the woods.


Cultivo una rosa blanca
En julio como en enero
Para el amigo sincero
Que me da su mano franca
Guantanamera, guajira Guantanamera

I cultivate a white rose
In July as in January
For the sincere friend
Who gives me his honest hand.


Y para el cruel que me arranca
El corazon con que vivo
Cardo ni ortiga cultivo
Cultivo la rosa blanca
Guantanamera, guajira Guantanamera

And for the cruel one who would tear out
this heart with which I live
I do not cultivate nettles nor thistles
I cultivate a white rose


Con los pobres de la tierra
Quiero yo mi suerte echar
El arroyo de la sierra
Me complace más que el mar
Guantanamera, guajira Guantanamera

With the poor people of the earth
I want to share my fate
The brook of the mountains
Gives me more pleasure than the sea