BALLAD OF THE SLEIGH DOGS
Blue-eyed dogs who drag a sleigh / made of whales’ bones, ayayay / why do you march against the north wind / through those long plains of perpetual snow? / Hungry savage dogs rummaging / in that dead sea of ice, ayayay / who is your owner? What White Lady do you serve / who holds a cruel whip / to lead the course of your own breath? // Which is the aim, which is the mandate, which the fantasy / that burst you up with such effort, ayayay / if this aim, this mandate, this fantasy / you will never catch up with. // When the people enter into their small igloo / all of you will remain outside, ayayay. / and you should have to sacrify the weakest among you / to satisfy your hunger. // Proletarian white dogs of the eternal whiteness / of the country with the long shadows, ayayay / you know not how to bark, and when you howl / You seem like wolves of the temperate forests.

THE RIVER
It is not called Danube / neither is it the Mississippi / it is called Ibaizabal, the river / of the country where I was born. / It is not the Danube, neither is it the / Yellow River / the small short narrow river with the / rusty water. /There it was where we used to play a long time ago / among those stone steps. // It is not called the Danube / neither Nile, nor Niagara. / Its name is Ibaizabal, the river of the country / where I was born. / I left from there, I crossed on top of / thousands of bridges. / I never imagined that I would again / find the river. / Now, inside me, I feel the muddy / waters of the Ibaizabal. / I know not how the waters eased / inside me. / Perchance I drunk unknowingly / water that came from there. / It is not the Danube, neither is it / he holy Ganges, / it is the neglected river / of our infancy. / Now they flow in and around my heart / the murky waters of the Ibaizabal. // It is not called the Danube, the river / is called Ibaizabal. / The river that has entered deep into me / although I walked around so far away. / The one which since then / flows thru my veins. / The only one who calls me by my / true name… / The murky waters of the Ibaizabal / old waters that give me sense.

ON THE LOST BEACH
The old pier, a poor wooden barrack cabin / fishes that hang along a wire, on sale / mexican music / mosquitos and jejens coming out in the gloaming / and girls who go towards the night / to sleep later on, with the wind recently / crossing the mangrove swamps. // Sitting below and old ceiling, with the back / leaning against a post / looking at the sea, the water, the water that flows / reaching the beach. / Gulfweeds and medusas on the sandy bank / and in-between the sand and the grass / mud, rotten mud, that seems to look like / the customs. // And you, seated there, a customs officer / on the swamp. / Let’s suppose that you have the penis swollen / and you invent a name / for that ignored beach. Or not, you will leave / it with no name / margining it away from all maps, without / certification of the memory. // Things are not what they should be. If they were / you would be drinking a cold beer / in Laredo with Nivea cosmetics, and a tourist visa. / You would be a formal, honest and responsible Basque. / But here what are you / but a shipwrecked person who has mislaid his ideas / just like when shoes are lost? //
Better if this beach were imaginary. Better / If you had not arrived ever / to these coasts, if you had not ever drunk / the briny water. / You have a salting in your breath. / Resonant waves echoe in your ears and the / certainty / of your being so alone, so far away from everything / that only on fiction it could be plausible. // Including that girl, what is that girl that you embrace / as if it were a lost piece of wood? / But yours is the sea, and the dawn / and the night, yours is the time. / Listen / to the meaningless waves that gather on the beach / and Mexico lindo y Querido.

THE CITIES
It is your body that is now my city, you are now / the country that I love. // For me the place wherein to live is not so important. // Paris, Timbuktu / New York, Bombay, Segura / Berlin, Kathmandu / Sidney, Addis Abeba / Algiers, Lisbon / Buda, Pest, Kiev, Ottawa. // But now, you are my city / my country, my tomb, and the place where I am born. // For me, the place to die, is neither important: /
Lome, Fribourg / Quito, Tallinn, Luanda / Tashkent, Mutriku / Shanghai, Istanbul, Praia / Prague, Kigali / Bangkok, Amsterdam, Basra. // Because now, you are my city / my country, muy tomb, and the place where I am born.

THE TWO HANDS
With one hand I told you: “Bye / until you desire…” / With the other hand I don’t know what to do / ay, as you come back. / With the other hand I don’t know what to do / till you come back. // The right hand calls you up / on the phone / the left hand also has the certainty / that it loves you. / These are two hands that will not fight each other / because of you. // With the left hand I open the window / with the right I take some coffee. / With the left I take my guitar, and with the right / I compose some soft sounds. / The left hand shows me the watch / but it does not abbreviate my time. // I need my two hands to receive you. / I feel in your hands
to love you. With these hands / that extend themselves / and lengthen, and almost catch you up / to caress you. / I need the two hands for when you arrive. / I have my two hands free / for you.

THE TONGUE OF ALBERT EINSTEIN
The man who puts out his tongue / from the wall / that Albert Einstein of the poster / what does he wish to say? // With those blue eyes and those long tresses of hair / he has not combed his hair in his whole life. / And now, whom does he mock with that tongue? // Does he mock the twentieth century? / Does he do it at this so complicated world? / Does he do it at the people who pass the street? / Or does he mock at me? // Listen, at whom do you put out your tongue? / At the United States? / At the disunited? Or at us who are the wretches? // The tongue concept gives the impression / of being / more transcendental than the theory / of relativity. // In the market of Kabul are sold / munitions and amapola. / In the room and on the wall there is the tongue / of Albert Einstein.

SONG AT DAWN
Oh, night, much darker than a closed window / continue, continue / so that the light would do no damage on the / eyes of my lover. // Continue during a century, or during / at least twenty years more. / Oh, night, more savage than paradise / Uncivilized, veiled, ingnored. // Continue at least during / seven days more / Oh, night, more mysterious / than love. // Continue, so as not to wake up the cock / nor the husband / nor the guard, nor the priest, lengthen yourself / during an hour more / continue, continue, continue, night / a little more. // Continue at least during / an instant more / Oh, night, more mysterious / than love..

HE WILL NOT COME BACK
He will never come back. / Where would he come back to? / Where would it be better than there to become old / out of place? / Out of place and alone, so that no one / should go to him to say farewell. // He will not return, time goes along / towards his absence. / That time that goes punctual and implacable / towards death / and on the most vulgar of days / it will take all from him. // He will not come back, not even with his emeralds / he won’t ever come back. / There he will remain without / the ever-changing phases of youth / naming some of his prejudices / the future. // The sun comes back, yes, without roots / and with no memory. / From sunset to sunrise, yes, the sun comes back / promoting thus splendid twilights. // But I shall not go back. / Where should I go back to? / Where else is it better to get old / out of place? / Out of place and alone, with no one / to come to say farewell to me.

A SONG THAT SHE WILL NEVER LISTEN TO
We were on a trip along the shores of the Aral Sea / we had on shirts Pacific Ocean. / We climbed up on an abandoned tank and from that vantage point / we saw various airplanes / that were becoming rusty under the sun with no indication / from and in what war they had found their end. // The sky was blue, the earth burned out / and that child arrived / asking, in her idiom, something that / we could not understand. // We did not know enough to understand. / Now I remember that question / and I should answer with a song, although that girl / would never listen to it. // We were going along the shores of that dried-up sea. / Impossible to know in which war this had been. // The sky was blue, the earth burned out / and the words the child spoke were incomprehensible. / Which was the question? / We did not even know what idiom she used. // We did not know enough to understand. / Now I remember it, and respond with my song / although she would never understand these words / which she would perhaps never listen to.

AMBASSADORS ON THE HORIZON
Escaping from the long arm of the law we arrive / on the horizon / and here we are, on the horizon, on the horizon / as embassadors on the horizon. // Where are you from? Who do you represent? // What is it you want? / Here also, there is need of a flag to be an ambassador / ambassador on the horizon. // We do not remember anymore whom we represent / without a flag, without a country. / With no diplomacy, with no mandate, ambassadors / ambassadors on the horizon. // In the uncertain limit where everything goes farther away / there is no coming back on a point that disappears / at the very border where we also get lost / ambassadors on the horizon. // Look there at the albatross. Don’t you remember? / Was not our flag like that? / The albatros looks like a flag, a flag that could suit us / we who are ambassadors / ambassadors on the horizon, on the horizon where all gets lost / on the horizon, on the horizon..

THE OLD NAMES
We were born in a very / narrow country. / The ancestors left us / a primitive country. / Prosperous businessmen buy / cheaply or expensively / our lands and the bones / of our people. / Land and bones, and this way / the times go forth and off away. / We, ourselves, are going too / so that every time, we get to be fewer / we that were, or have been. / Afterwards, what will remain? Some / names of places / perhaps: Ursouia, Itchasou / Irouleguy / Aussurucq or Tchoko / Maitia… / Names of the place that the people will say / with an air of mystery. / Names that the people will pronounce / with an air of mystery.