Some 45 years ago, in a small , dank room in Mexico City, three kids sat warily at the feet of their guitar teacher; Cornelio. Our first lesson... we sat with battered guitars on our knees, plucking gingerly at the strings and twisting our fingers into the convoluted chords Cornelio had us strum once and again until, probably thoroughly fed up with us, he taught us this song. I am 56 years old now, and it has always been my song. For me. No one else's. We would sing it on the the stoops into the night, everyone knowing that this was their song, no one else's, singing in english when we knew it was deliciously incorrect and rebellious to use the language of the enemy, having grown up playing Gringos and Guerrilleros, and never saying Coke but rather the black-waters-of-yanqui-imperialism ( I never owned up that I was, in fact, american, having been born in the US). It was an odd time warp, we all wanted to sing and play guitars and join the guerrilla fighters and live forever. SO we stared at the sun, and we killed a child and went on to be bureaucrats and painters and druggie wipeouts and all the other stories that still roam like ghosts throughout the streets where our children grow. Mr. Leonard Cohen, I would so love to hear your voice some day... but you gave me a song forever, and my daughter now sings along with me to take this waltz while a hyacinth weaves through her name - Xacinta- and we can talk about Lorca and the Spanish Civil War and poetry and all that is good, and my son hums partisan songs, and the stranger dances around us all.