Some tangos achieve fame by their influence on the genre, and some win their stature by their power to move us on the dance floor. Among the latter, we can securely count this gripping 1944 number “Tú, el cielo y tú,” by longtime Di Sarli collaborator Héctor Marcó. This tango has that huge and straining sound, that tone of tragic grandeur, which leads dancers to look deep within, and walk slowly but surely to the cross with that ugly tango-face of suffering. The vocal delivery of Alberto Podestá, in the recording most often played, makes this quite a climactic song later in the night. But what is it about? What is he singing?
The song’s plot is simple: in the verse, the guy is remembering his beloved who left, while he stands on a couple metaphors; and in the chorus, he prays that she will return, and (important part) that if she doesn’t (he knows she won’t), that she won’t reveal this, so that he never has to be certain. Doubt is uneasy, to paraphrase Voltaire; but certainty—certainty is unbearable.
The core emotion of the song expresses a very ironic, modern sensibility. It speaks of a longing which, since it cannot be granted, asks to be spared resolution: it wants to live in limbo, hoping to sidestep defeat by pretending not to notice it. Marcó conveys this recognition by inverting the sense of “el cielo y tu” (all this, and heaven too), normally an expression of joy. Here it suggests an upside-down secrecy, where “only heaven and you” will know the truth—that she has moved on. These are lyrics that, with their ambivalence and hard-bitten conscience, like so many tangos, could only have been written in our own post-Freudian world.
You, and Heaven and You (1944)
(Tr. Jake Spatz)
YouTube: Alberto Podestá (orq. Di Sarli)
Warm is still the handkerchief I’m saving
From the goodbye you were waving
On the loading dock in shadows…
Warm still… just like the evening’s setting sun…
My sun all frozen,
Without a hope, without a songbird…
Warm is still the final kiss I’m keeping
On my lips when you were leaving,
Because I’ll think of you each day!
You…
I know that heaven, heaven and you,
Are soon to come and save my hands
Upon this cross they’re fastened to…
And if so bold a lie
Just finds my penance,
Then don’t reveal the true
To serve my sentence!
Stay dear to me,
And keep my care…
Don’t disillusion me
With worse despair!
No!…
Don’t say goodbye again and go!
Be that for God alone to know,
And heaven and you!
Far off, in the fogs of things forgotten,
Where the wailing wind is sobbing
With the anguish of the dying…
Far off… whither souls in weeping go
When death’s upon them,
Over you my soul is crying…
Far off from your hand and from your laughter,
I adore you ever after…
And you hear the words I pray!
Tu, el cielo y tu (1944)
Music: Mario Canaro
Lyrics: Héctor Marcó
Tibio está el pañuelo todavía
Que tu adiós me repetía
Desde el muelle de las sombras…
Tibio… como en la tarde muere el sol.
Mi sol de nieve
Sin esperanza y sin alondras…
Tibio guardo el beso que dejaste
En mis labios al marcharte,
¡Porque aún no te olvidé!
¡Tú!…
Yo sé que el cielo, el cielo y tú,
Vendrán a mí para salvar
Mis manos presas a esta cruz.
Si esta mentira audaz
Busca mi pena,
No la descubras tú
Que me condena…
Guardala en ti
Que es mi querer,
Desengañarme así
¡Será más cruel!
¡No!…
¡No me repitas ese adiós!
Que esto lo sepa sólo Dios…
¡El cielo y tú!
Lejos, entre brumas del olvido
Donde el viento en su gemido
Dice cosas de agonía…
Lejos… donde las almas a llorar
Van con la muerte!
Allí te llora el alma mía…
Lejos de tu mano y de tu risa
Mi cariño te acaricia…
Y este ruego escucharás…