In the warm tears that the eyes generously gave,
roamed all colors.
New Orleans is where countless hearts
met to stem the angry sea.
Mountain-high waves,
don’t you have mercy on the newly-born child,
on the beautiful mother,
who is in helpless race with nature’s wrath,
carrying her fading child
with her thin breast,
sharing her milk with the children of the deserted neighborhoods.
In Louisiana and Alabama,
trees and birds are not celebrating their morning sun,
and nightly moon,
for the hands of Miriam and John and Jeanette,
blessed with wheat and bread, are no longer in sight.
Knights of day and of humanity,
have you seen with your hearts the girl whom,
in her eyelashes,
abodes the youth of America.
Have you seen the old man who,
with the pen of memory,
painted the future,
leaning on the goodness of the present past.
My dear people carried on the raging sea,
I shall not be salvaged by the sighs of the poets,
on the route to the elevated shore.
With my anxious arms,
I laid one hundred roses of hope.
A desire drives me to walk on the confident street of rosy and sweet memories,
in the city of winds and waves and dreams,
where the lights are dim, but inspire confidence and hope;
a message do the lights send;
where the leaves have fallen and are adrift in the uproar of rising waves,
and people have trembled,
but kept the hope candled in the deep corners of the heart.
Heedless I am to the vanity of the persistent flood.
The jazz of hope and humanity soothes the heart.
The sun will not fade away from the heights of my memory.
The moon will continue,
with its calming rays,
guide me back to my home;
this time, to New Orleans.