Bazaar: "a Bit of Tango Under my Braces"

Cambalache, Enrique Santos Discépolo, 1934.

Translation by Alberto Paz.

That the world was and always be filth,

I already know…

In the year five hundred and six

and in the year two thousand too!

There always have been thieves,

traitors and victims of fraud,

happy and bitter people,

valuables and imitations

But, that the twentieth century

is a display

of insolent malice,

nobody can deny it anymore.

We lived sunk in a fuzz

and in the same mud

all well-worn…

Today it happens it is the same

to be decent or a traitor!

To be an ignorant, a genius, a pickpocket,

a generous person or a swindler!

All is the same! Nothing is better!

They are the same, an idiot ass

and a great professor!

There are no failing grades or merit valuations,

the immoral have caught up with us.

If one lives in a pose

and another, in his ambition, steals,

it’s the same if it’s a priest,

a mattress maker, a king of clubs,

a cad or a tramp.

What a lack of respect,

what a way to run over reason!

Anybody is a gentleman!

Anybody is a thief!

Mixed with Stavisky, you have Don Bosco

and La Mignon

don Chicho and Napoleon,

Carnera and San Martin.

Like in the disrespectful window

of the bazaars,

life is mixed up,

and wounded by a sword without rivets

you can see a Bible crying

next to a water heater.

Twentieth century, bazaar

problematic and feverish!

If you don’t cry, you don’t get fed

and if you don’t steal, you’re a stupid.

Go ahead! Keep it up!

That there, in hell

we’re gonna reunite.

Don’t think anymore,

move out of the way.

Nobody seems to care

if you were born honest.

That is the same the one who works,

day and night like an ox,

than the one who lives from the others,

than the one that kills or heals

or the one who lives outside the law.