Pass me a hankie
Silvio Rodriguez is a Cuban singer-songwriter that I know through my parents. Since I remember them playing his music to me when I was a wee child I guess he was popular in the early eighties. Then I forgot about him until I made friends with a huge fan of his.
Singer-songwriters in Spanish tend to adopt that confessional, intimate poetic style that I often dislike (as if having to study Bécquer in High School was not bad enough); and the only singer-songwriters that I like are the ones I grew up listening to, before I got so snobbish, and the ones I associate with people I love. I think that Silvio Rodríguez has both excellent and awful songs. This one here is the saddest song, even the saddest poem, that I know in any language. If I didn’t know it since I was a baby, if I heard it for the first time now, I would hate it (disliking sentimental poetry doesn’t mean I’m not sentimental, but don’t tell anyone). You can read it in Spanish here, if you want. This is my translation. The bad rhyme is intentional.
My blue unicorn, I lost it yesterday
I left it on the field and it went away.
Any information, I’d pay well.
the flowers it left behind refused to speak to me.
My blue unicorn went missing yesterday
Maybe it left me, maybe it got lost
And I only have one blue unicorn
If anyone has any clue, I’m begging
A hundred thousand, a million I’d pay
My blue unicorn went missing yesterday
It’s gone.
My unicorn and I made friends
partly with love and partly with truth
with its deep blue horn it fished for songs
knowing how to share them was its vocation
My blue unicorn went missing yesterday
and I might seem obsessed.
But I only have one blue unicorn
And even if I had two, I only want that one
Any information, I’ll pay
My blue unicorn went missing yesterday.
It’s gone.
Singer-songwriters in Spanish tend to adopt that confessional, intimate poetic style that I often dislike (as if having to study Bécquer in High School was not bad enough); and the only singer-songwriters that I like are the ones I grew up listening to, before I got so snobbish, and the ones I associate with people I love. I think that Silvio Rodríguez has both excellent and awful songs. This one here is the saddest song, even the saddest poem, that I know in any language. If I didn’t know it since I was a baby, if I heard it for the first time now, I would hate it (disliking sentimental poetry doesn’t mean I’m not sentimental, but don’t tell anyone). You can read it in Spanish here, if you want. This is my translation. The bad rhyme is intentional.
My blue unicorn, I lost it yesterday
I left it on the field and it went away.
Any information, I’d pay well.
the flowers it left behind refused to speak to me.
My blue unicorn went missing yesterday
Maybe it left me, maybe it got lost
And I only have one blue unicorn
If anyone has any clue, I’m begging
A hundred thousand, a million I’d pay
My blue unicorn went missing yesterday
It’s gone.
My unicorn and I made friends
partly with love and partly with truth
with its deep blue horn it fished for songs
knowing how to share them was its vocation
My blue unicorn went missing yesterday
and I might seem obsessed.
But I only have one blue unicorn
And even if I had two, I only want that one
Any information, I’ll pay
My blue unicorn went missing yesterday.
It’s gone.