You, oh my Lisbon

With these bathed tiling

In tears you wash them

Randomly carved clays

Yours is a sea of turmoil

That trickles down the hills

On calm days

And on troubled evenings

Many are the people who visit you

Traverse your insides 

Most of them were born of you 

Other are completely strange

Lisbon in the rain

Lisbon by the wind

Everybody cries for you

For the days of encouragement

Lisbon washed in tears

They are of sorrow

Many more are of joys

In those sung Fados

And you drown in longing

Through these streets and alleys

Right where you'll see them leaving

Beyond those stone pillars

Oh river bed, where Tágides bathe

You carry the tears away

Some let themselves go

Drained by the waters stream

Others want to stay

In the end they all leave, with the wind

Swallowed by evaporation

Swept by the afternoon's mist

Those crippled beggars standing

Pale, destroyed creatures 

No dreams in their minds

All drowned without water

Are they the free ones?

Who are they?

Who are the other ones?

Who are we?

Singers with a past

Songs of the future

Written in the present

No longer kept unsung 

Those coarse voices

Throating wishes, fears, anxieties

They spread the word

And again, it’s the sad Fado

Those sepulcral guitars

They squeal the same pains

Just as the wood in the ships

By cracking the waves of hope

How many people come into you

Ride Through Your Arteries

Stay in your heart?

In the end, they go, again and again

They all leave you coldly

Be it a hot night, or a cold day

At dawn of the twilight

Because they don't want to face you

Amongst your stone walls

The ones walking on the seven hills

You were conquered

You were loved

Lisbon, you are chaos

To suddenly become a bonanza

As the rain washes the evil away

The rain that brings back hope

Lisbon, water girl

Born on the river current

In the sea salt was a woman

On the decks you've become a lady

Lisbon, you are the smell

From this ocean that floods you

Without ever leaving the banks

Where the fish are plenty

These white, immaculate sheets

They drown in dense fog

Eternally waiting

For the Overcast to return

Today, there's no Fifth Empire

That so longed by a restless Pessoa

No longer are them Tágides on the prowl

Watching in the calm waters of  the Tagus

As the days fade into nights

Nights bright into new days

Quietly on the shores

On the land they march

Lisbon was the girl

The one who saw departure

It's the woman city

The one that never left