The Spanish for Bastard (Cabron)

Lyrics

Acapulco. Let's say... 1875.
The air is thick enough to drink.
Smells of lime, and sweat, and the sour ferment of pulque in a clay jar.
Two-thirty in the afternoon. The world is asleep, or pretending to be.

There's a man in the corner, polishing a machete with a greasy rag.
Another one stares into his mug.
And a third man walks in, whispers a single word to the bartender.
Cabrón.
The air goes cold. Colder than it has any right to be.
This is the word from the Guadalajara court records. 1783.
The word that means your wife has found another house.
The word that puts horns on your head and a blade in your hand.

It’s the name for the goat on the dusty hill.
It’s the name for the husband who doesn't know.
And it's the name you call your best friend in the whole damn world.
¡Oye, cabrón!
How did it learn to wear so many faces?

An hour later, the door swings open again.
Two men, laughing. They slap each other on the back.
One of them shouts it. ¡Qué pasa, cabrón!
And it's a prayer. It's a welcome.
The same sound, the same shape in the mouth.
But the machete stays on the table.
The pulque keeps flowing.
The insult is a key that unlocks a door.

It’s the name for the goat on the dusty hill.
It’s the name for the husband who doesn't know.
And it's the name you call your best friend in the whole damn world.
¡Oye, cabrón!
How did it learn to wear so many faces?

From *cabra*, the goat. Simple as that.
The stubborn beast. The thing with horns.
I imagine Velázquez heard it in a tavern in 1640.
A word that walks from the pasture, to the painter's ear, to a public square where a man’s honor is sliced clean off.
And then it keeps walking, for another two hundred years, right into a hug.

I sat there in that cantina until the sun went down.
Finished my drink.
The word hangs in the air.
A ghost with three heads.
Yeah. A ghost with three heads.