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Translation
New Ideas
You have to learn to unlearn
It's not a contradiction, it's making things right1.
Not everything that can be seen is real,
Not everything that can be heard is true.
We should learn
That not everything we're taught makes us grow.
Forgive me, forgive my insistence, but
I like to sing
I let loose in melody2
What I should cry to.
Well, I learned that in this filth
Misery should not be silenced
Enough! Throw your cards down on the table3.
Life is like a game:
Enjoy yourself, it fills you all of a sudden,
But sometimes our luck fails.
I want to see us risk to increase what we have
And prove to each other that we can
Live on our own in our house4
Clean the militia off our covers
Live humble and free in our house
Let go of the teat and walk, thoughts flowing, and take the reigns
You have to learn to unlearn
It's not a contradiction, it's making things right.
Not everything that can be seen is real,
Not everything that can be heard is true.
We should learn
That not everything we're taught makes us grow.
There's a need for new ideas, contribute what you feel.
There's a need for new ideas, because custom hems us in.
The wind blows hard today, plunge your roots earthward
It approaches with the force of the hurricane, grab onto solid ground,
Don't let yourself be taken, don't let yourself be taken5, don't let yourself be programmed.
Grow your own ideas, grow your own ideas.
- 1. More literally, "it's to amend yourself."
- 2. To trill or to warble are more direct translations of "trino," but are distractingly unusual descriptors in English.
- 3. As the reciprocal of "keeping your cards close to your chest"
- 4. I don't know if this is provocative in Puerto Rico. In broad swaths of Latin America, the idea that teenagers / young adults can or should live separate from their parents before marriage is met with considerable resistance. It's becoming normal, but in Mexico that happened over my mother's lifetime.
- 5. In English it would be more normal to say "don't let yourself be taken in," but the juxtaposition with the hurricane works better without it.
Cyndamur✕
Cultura Profética: Top 3
| 1. | Ilegal |
| 2. | La Complicidad |
| 3. | La Espera |
Comments
About translator
In English speaking countries, an admonition to leave the teat behind would be an attack on government assistance, but in this context it seems like a more general exhortation to outgrow childishness - specifically, to stop accepting what you were raised to believe. And the call to get the military out of people's everyday lives was interesting, albeit a little oddly worded in Spanish as well.