My last grandmother’s heartbreak
was caused by an accordion,
his husband played it so well
he must have sold his soul to the devil.

When my father gave it to buy new coats for winter
she cried for the memories and lost years,
the widow of a man who was still alive
only continents away.
He said his soul costed a fortune
but one that could keep his children’s stomachs full.

So he played all night long
in the streets of Switzerland,
over much colder pebbles than our damp Galician fields
without knowing if he will ever return,
but that hunger and poverty was the worst war of all.

Now I know my homeland is a grandmother
I am sure,
she has seen all her lovers emigrate
to a fertile land, a richer paradise.
She could not bear fast enough,
so her children scattered away
and died like Icarus,
burned and buried
by their killers in the plain.

Our country has made us weary of leaving,
that is why most of us stay
in a place that hasn’t been able to stop mourning.
How can one leave this ancestral sacrifice,
the beautiful language
of a quiet Sunday morning,
and the piles of leaves always gathered at your doorstep
ready for you to play with them.
A place that weeps for months
for those lost at sea,
it wasn’t the lighthouse fault,
they were meant to return,
only not to us.

There is no forgetting for us,
who still keep the instruments locked away.
Maybe that is why we learn to use our voices,
but here, it’s like screaming over the noise of the oceans,
here, it's not loud enough,
maybe it never will.

We’ll choke with the blood of our sore throats
and swollen tongues still not used to
the language who killed our grandfathers in the cornfields.
We will die repeating the same sung history,
like our grandmothers before us.