Alberto Rios: Refugio's Hair

In the old days of our family,

My grandmother was a young woman

Whose hair was as long as the river.

She lived with her sisters on the ranch

La Calera--The Land of the Lime--

And her days were happy.

But her uncle Carlos lived there too,

Carlos whose soul had the edge of a knife.

One day, to teach her to ride a horse,

He made her climb on the fastest one,

Bareback, and sit there

As he held its long face in his arms.

And then he did the unspeakable deed 

For which he would always be remembered:

He called for the handsome baby Pirrín

And he placed the child in her arms.

With that picture of a Madonna on horseback

He slapped the shank of the horse’s rear leg.

The horse did what a horse must,

Racing full toward the bright horizon.

But first he ran under the álamo trees

To rid his back of this unfair weight:

This woman full of tears

And this baby full of love.

When they reached the trees and went under,

Her hair, which had trailed her,

Equal in its magnificence to the tail of the horse,

That hair rose up and flew into the branches

As if it were a thousand arms,

All of them trying to save her.

The horse ran off and left her,

The baby still in her arms,

The two of them hanging from her hair.

The baby looked only at her

And did not cry, so steady was her cradle.

Her sisters came running to save them.

But the hair would not let go.

From its fear it held on and had to be cut,

All of it, from her head.

From that day on, my grandmother 

Wore her hair short like a scream,

But it was long like a river in her sleep.