LA PULPERA
DE SANTA
LUCÍA.

She was blonde, and her sky-blue eyes reflected the glory of the day, and she sang like a mockingbird, the tavern keeper of Santa Lucía.

She was the flower of the old parish. Which gaucho did not love her? The soldiers from four barracks sighed in the tavern.

The payador of the Mazorca sang to her with a sweet moaning of guitars, by the iron grille scented with jasmine, in the courtyard scented with Arabian jasmine.

"With all my soul I love you, tavern keeper, and one day you will have to be mine, while the nights of the neighborhood are filled by the guitars of Santa Lucía."

A payador of Lavalle took her away as the year eighteen-forty was dying; her sky-blue eyes no longer light up the parish of Santa Lucía.

Rosas's buglers did not return to sing her vidalas and cielos. At the tavern's iron grille, the jasmines wept with jealousy.

And the payador of the Mazorca returned to sing in the empty courtyard the sorrowful and final serenade that the river wind carried away:

Where are you with your sky-blue eyes, oh tavern keeper who was never mine?" How the guitars weep for you, the guitars of Santa Lucía!