My Friend Loui's Blues Poem by Irvin Rios Gracia

You and I have memories
longer than the road that stretches out ahead.
The Beatles

There were also nights when the rain
was the soundtrack of the road.

We took our dreams on our backs
you, with your bass guitar which gave you
a legendary and majestic air,
I, with my borrowed guitar that learned to translate
the heart's music of the moody men.

We were eternally children and life
nursery rhymes downs from the stars
and the streets so innocent at that time of the night
newborn to join to our unarmed steps.

In our pockets a few aged coins
to share our costly friendship
always the humility made verb
but rich in other necessities:

The searching of the refuge of our company
to forget the forgetfulness,
laughters like wings to protect us from the future
instants of silence to keep loving us
while we finish the cigarret way home
comradeship to fight shoulder to shoulder
against the phantoms of the future,
the simple, elemental present of our routines.

But the Time rained on those nights
with its noisy eagerness of erasing our footprints,
vain attempt, ink of love is their essence,
the ancient beauty of friendship is their alchemy.
It only caused one ravage, distance is not,
my beloved friend, what separate us,
but the Time that has happened since those
far nights when we played to give name
to our anonymous lives.

There are nights like this one when the rain
is the soundtrack of the insomnia
and the wind sings the smell of your name to my window,
it's raining outside and inside its blues of nighttime waters
I hear how lucky we the mortals are to find
souls like you who help us to unravel the days
and keep them in the memory
the only nook where the rains of Time
don't leave victims.

(Original language: Spanish)
(English version by Irvin Rios Gracia)