When I hear them speak of peace or war
Of occupation, violence or of power
In curfew's silence I stay loyal
In honour and love of Ana sem terra .

Doing the encampment rounds
I came to know her bravery, her hope
In her will to have one day
A land, a plot, of her own.

In her mind she'd kept so rooted
The lack of the land her name contained,
That the popular allusion to Ana sem Terra(1)
Become effective and germane.

Many times I saw her, together with her own,
I in moments troubled and restless,
In my thankless duty of repression,
And she not wanting to see me again.

Perhaps she struggles on,
At the front, rearing children,
With that faith that moves mountains,
On the roads to her promised land.

But I never saw her again, since
We stood between war or peace,
And she left, with the rest of the camp,
For Eldorado-Carajás.

1 Editor's note: Ana sem terra / Landless Anna: an allusion to the character Ana Terra, from the first novel, O continente (The Continent) of Érico Veríssimo's trilogy O tempo e o vento (Time and the Wind). She is the symbol of the courageous woman who, after losing all the members of her family except her son Pedro Terra, defends the land during the conflicts in the south of the country over the demarcation of borders.

This song is from the CD Songs Embracing Dreams