From a Good Friend

A good friend of mine sent me the following email.  I am reposting it here with his permission.  Thanks, Pablo! 

I thought you would enjoy this song by Argentinean singer Alberto Cortéz:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bSDKJN_C3_g

The translation is:

Don't call me 'foreigner' simply because I was born far away

Or because the land I came from has a different name

Don't call me foreigner because my mother's breast was different

Or because my childhood was couched by a different language of fairy-tales

Don't call me a foreigner , For we both had the light

of the love of a mother, in the songs and the kisses

With which we are dreamt equally by our mothers against their breasts.

Don't call me foreigner, nor think of where I come from,

But rather it is better to know where we're headed, where time is leading us

Don't call me foreigner, because your bread and your fire

calm my hunger and cold, and your roof shelters me

Don't call me foreigner, your wheat is like my wheat

Your hand is like mine, your fire like my fire

And hunger never warns of its coming, it simply changes owners.

And yet you call me a foreigner because I was brought by a different path,

Because I was born in another village, because I know different oceans

And one day I sailed from another port.. If they're always the same,

The waving handkerchiefs in farewell, and the blurry pupils of those

we leave behind, the friends that call us, and the kisses are always the same,

And the love of the one who dreams with the day of your return.

Don't call me a foreigner, we carry the same cry

The same old weariness that man has carried

from the depths of time, when there were no borders,

Before they came, those who divide and kill,

Who steal and lie, those who sell our dreams,

It is they who invented that word: Foreigner.

Don't call me a foreigner, it is a sad word,

It is a chilly word, it smells of oblivion and exile

Don't call me a foreigner: look at your child and mine

How they run hand in hand to the end of the path

Don't call me a foreigner- they know nothing of languages,

Of limits and flags, see how they float skywards

By a dovelike laugh that reunites them in flight

Don't call me a foreigner, think of your brother and mine

The body full of bullets kissing the ground in death

They were not foreigners: They always knew each other

Through the eternal liberty, and they died just as free.

Don't call me a foreigner, look well into my eyes

Far beyond the hatred, of envy and fear

And you will see that I am a Man: I cannot be a foreigner!

~Pablo Romero, Tenor

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