1. THE ARMED FOREST (The Canoe) / (EL BOSQUE ARMADO (La Canoa))
Words and Music by Chabuca Granda
Guitar: Sergio Valdeos

A canoe in Puerto Maldonado*
In the canoe a shout
A shot fired
A muted shore
A warrior dead
And a rower

A canoe in Puerto Maldonado
A long journey starts anew
With the river
A bell bursts
Under the water
I will sleep the rest
Of my amazement
So I can arrive early
There is still an open path
And a star

An armed forest, an iris,
And a trace
A canoe in Puerto Maldonado
A long journey starts anew
With the river
A bell bursts
Under the water
I will sleep the rest
Of my amazement
So I can arrive early

There is still an open path
And a star,
An armed forest, an iris,
And a trace

A canoe in Puerto Maldonado
A warrior dead
And a rower
Ay...

*Puerto Maldonado is a port city in the southeastern Amazonian region of Peru.

2. SLIPPERY ONES / (RESBALOSAS)
Traditional

My life is bleak and my heart hurts
It hurts so deeply that I can't go on
There's no one in the world to comfort me
Or lessen my fatal pain

The sigh was once
The most graceful messenger
Of the first judgment
That man makes of woman

I come to ask your forgiveness
I cannot continue with you
As my worst enemy
My heart is my own

No one can guess what happens
On the way to my lover's house
The nightingales sing joyously
And the small stream murmurs

Maria Manuela, keeper of cattle,
Went to the pampa for work
She sells neither cane nor sugar
And she hasn't the money to love

I went to the plaza
I bought onions
I bought tomatoes and parsley
You don't know,
Chinese girl, white, mulatta,
The worthless mess
That I have here
Plin plin plin plin jaja
Plin plin plin plan
I have a jug
That is already half empty

The goat said to the chicken
Yumba ka ka ka ka
Where is the yerba buena
Yumba ka
And the chicken replied
Yumba ka ka ka ka
Cursed is she who reigns
Yumba ka

And so, miraculously,
All is not settled
The bushes of Huacachina
Let's go to Huacachina
To the baths of Huacachina
Yumba ka
The April sun rises in the east

Make me take my life
If it is a crime to love you

When the fountains pour
Their torrents
Poisoned will be
Their crystals

I am poor because I lack
The joy of the powerful

Shut, shut parrot
That cried,
samba.

*Huacachina is a small town in the Southern coast of Peru, built around a desert oasis flanked by enormous sand dunes.

3. THE POET'S GUN / (EL FUSIL DEL POETA)
Words and Music by Chabuca Granda
Guitar: Sergio Valdeos
Cajon: Juan Madrano Cotito
Contrabass: David Pinto
Percussion: Hugo Bravo

While he played the war of children
With a make-believe gun
Made maybe of rice, or, who knows, a rose
Love aged him, fury building up inside
And he decided to die where he'd always wanted to
It simply happens as he said

That day the gun was a rose
Shot into the air, dangerously
That day the sun was more sun to the river
And the river was more a river
And war was more
And death was more, from the riverbank
Against a light gun
Which that day
Was just a rose

That day the sun was more sun to the river
The river was more and so too was war
And death was more, from the river bank
And the detonated verse was a grenade
The dark rose is open
Rooted in the river bank
Resting in the dew
That rained from that river
Sunken river in its broken vein
Open, alert, as it was then
On the shoulders of the poet

He's winning the war with his rose
His mouth from the river
His birds, his trees
Because he fought the war of men
Making a gun of anything that wasn't a gun
That day he armed himself with a rose
The poet's gun is a rose

4. MOUNTAIN DEER/ (VENADITO DE LOS MONTES)
Words by Mario Florián
Music by Juan Luís Pereyra Del Mar
Charango & Mandolin: Pereyra Juan Luis Del Mar

Mountain deer,
We should be friends because
The panther is making the rounds,
Mountain deer.

I'll give you rainwater in the gourd
Of my hands, and herbs
I'll collect with my hands,
Mountain deer.

You'll lick my face,
I'll stroke your back.
We'll go out every afternoon,
Mountain deer.

Should one of us die,
We'll live by the lloke*
You and I will be alone,
Mountain deer.

*Lloke: a Quechua word meaning a bush that has thorns instead of leaves. Also known as the "crown of Christ," its very hard stem is traditionally used as a walking stick and passed down from generation to generation.

5. THE LIZARDS / (LOS LAGARTOS)
Words by Federico García Lorca
Music by Paco Ibáñez
Flute: Nestor Benitez
Percussion: Manongo Mujica

The male lizard cries
The female lizard cries
The two lizards,
With a white apron,

Have lost, without loving,
The two lizards
Have lost, without loving,
Their wedding ring

Ay their ring of lead
Ay their leaden ring

Look at them, how old they are,
The two lizards
See how old they are
How old the lizards are

Ay how they cry and cry
How the lizards cry

6. SILENT STORY / (UN CUENTO SILENCIOSO)
Words and Music by Chabuca Granda
Guitar: Sergio Valdeos
Cajon: Juan Madrano Cotito

If I could, I would tell
A silent story
Of colors and in summer
I would give you dreamers
And magnetic fantasies
Possible in the stories,
Impossible in colors,
I would be born from the water
Where the rainbow
Safely nests
I would live out my days
And keep myself busy
I would be woven, one summer,
Lucky that the winter had not yet come
The world, it is said,
Must die from the cold

My story began
muttering with the blood
of a poet,
Trumpeting pitted words
Suddenly it is my eyes
The mirrors have been erased
In my eyes
They have cried their victories
Their fantasies in my eyes
Their wounds
Dying
A warrior between my eyes
Was dying
The silence is long and the mirror
That embitters my mouth
Each day
The world, they say,
Must die from the cold

In others,
The rainbows
Would sing