Papá cuéntame otra vez [English translation]

Papa tell me again that story, how lovely

of gendarmes [1] and fascists, and students with bangs,

and sweet urban warfare in bellbottoms

and Rolling Stones songs, and girls in miniskirts.

Papa tell me again all that amused you

destroying the age of rusted dictators

and how you sang Al Vent [2] and occupied the Sorbonne [3]

in that [distant] French May in the days of wine and roses.

Papa tell me again that story, how lovely

of that crazy warrior that they killed in Bolivia [4],

and whose rifle no one has yet risked taking up again,

and how since that day all seems uglier.

Father tell me again that after so much barricade

and after so much fist in the air and so much blood spilled

at the end of the match you couldn't do anything

and under the cobblestones there was no beach sand

It was hard, the defeat: all that was dreamed

rotted in the corners, accumulated cobwebs,

and now nobody sings Al Vent, now that there are no crazies, now that there are no pariahs,

but it has to rain although the plaza stays dirty.

It's far away, that May, far away Saint Denis [5]

how far is Jean Paul Sartre, very far that Paris

nonetheless at times I think that in the end it's all the same

the blows keep falling over whoever fusses [6]

And they continue the same dead lost to cruelty

Now they die in Bosnia those who used to die in Vietnam [7]

Now they die in Bosnia those who used to die in Vietnam

Now they die in Bosnia those who used to die in Vietnam