Cambalache

That the world was and will be a mess
I know that...
(In five hundred and six
and in two thousand too!).
That there have always been crooks,
Machiavellians and swindlers,
happy and bitter,
values and dublé...
But that the twentieth century
is a display
of insolent curse,
no one can deny it anymore.
We live wallowing
in a meringue
and in the same mud
all of us groping each other...

Today it turns out that it's the same thing
to be right than a traitor!...
Ignorant, wise or a swindler..,
generous or swindler!
It's all the same!
Nothing is better!
The same a donkey
as a great teacher!
There are no procrastinators
nor rank,
the immoral ones
have made us equal.
If one lives in imposture
and another steals in his ambition,
it makes no difference whether he is a priest,
colchonero, king of clubs,
a cheek or a stowaway!....

What a lack of respect, what an outrage
to reason!
Anyone is a gentleman!
Anyone is a thief!
Mixed with Stavisky goes Don Bosco
and 'La Mignon',
Don Chicho and Napoleon,
Carnera and San Martin...
Just like in the disrespectful shop window
of the cambalaches
life has been mixed,
and wounded by a sword without rivets
you see the Bible weeping
against a heater...

Twentieth century, a troubled and feverish
troubled and feverish!...
He who does not cry does not suckle
and he who doesn't work is a fool!
Come on!
Come on!
That there in the oven
we are going to meet!
Don't think anymore,
sit on one side,
nobody cares
if you were born honored!
It's all the same if you work
night and day like an ox
as he who lives off others,
as the one who kills, as the one who cures
or is outside the law...