Love (Amor)

Music piece by:
Guillermo Núñez (lyrics) and Sergio Vesely (music)
Testimony by:
Sergio Vesely
Experience in:
Campamento de Prisioneros Melinka, Puchuncaví, 1975

This song is based on a poem Guillermo wrote in the Puchuncaví Prison Camp dedicated to his partner Soledad. Of all the songs I composed as a prisoner, this is the only one where the lyrics are not mine.

The reason is very human and simple. One day Guillermo asked me if I could set to music verses he had written so he could sing them to his beloved the next time she visited him.

I found the idea so original and I liked it so much that I decided to help him.

I took the sheet of paper with the poem to my cell in one of the adjacent huts. After reading and re-reading it several times, I began to compose this song.

It’s a shame, but I don’t recall if Soledad ever got a chance to hear it.


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Published on: 23 September 2015

Love
What smile, what song
what flower or pain
are you?

Love
What song without a history
what absence without you,
are you?

Even when you were not my smile
you were not my heartache
we knew that today
that you and I would be united
like a smile perched
on every tree, on every cloud.

The two of us…
Love…
If you leave every afternoon without me
you keep being here.

Love
there is a rose in my hand
that grows and becomes larger
for you.

Love
no cage anywhere in the world
can ever hide it
from you.

Like a nauseating air
a howl rises between us
and separated
we see ourselves retaining the whole sky
to hear each other, to see each other
to fly together, to fly forever.

The two of us…
Love…
There is a rose in my hand
that grows and becomes larger
and needs a sky
to fly….




Related testimonies:

  • The Black King (El rey negro)  Sergio Vesely, Campamento de Prisioneros Melinka, Puchuncaví, 1975

    One cold winter night of 1975, the small clinic of Melinka, in the Puchuncaví Detention Camp, became the setting for a touching story.

  • National Anthem of Chile  Boris Chornik Aberbuch, Campamento de Prisioneros Melinka, Puchuncaví, March 1975

    The Puchuncaví detention camp’s daily routine included mandatory participation in the ceremonies of raising and taking down the Chilean flag on the flagpole at the entrance to the camp.

  • Dreams of my Imprisonment (Sueños de mi encierro)  Mario Patricio Cordero Cedraschi, Cárcel de Valparaíso, Winter of 1975

    I’d spent two years in prison and there was no end in sight for my time in jail. I observed during visiting hours that many prisoners had children, a wife, family.

  • Ode to Joy (Himno a la alegría)  Luis Madariaga, Cárcel de Valparaíso, 1974 - 1976

    In prison, we would sing the 'Ode to Joy' when a comrade was released or sent to exile.

  • To Sing by Improvising (Pa’ cantar de un improviso)  Claudio Enrique Durán Pardo (Kila Chico), Campamento de Prisioneros Melinka, Puchuncaví, June 1975

    We made a Venezuelan cuatro from a large plank of wood attached to one of the walls of the "ranch" where we ate.

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