Mariano chords by Robert Earl Keen

• Capo on 2nd

Mariano
By: Robert Earl Keen

Capo 2nd Fret


  Am                F
The man outside he works for me, his name is Mariano
  Am                 C         G
He cuts and trims the grass for me he makes the flowers bloom
  Am                 F
He says that he comes from a place not far from Guanajuato
   Am               G         Am
Thats two days on a bus from here, a lifetime from this room.

 Am                F
I fix his meals and talk to him in my old broken spanish
  Am                   C        G
He points at things and tells me names of things I can't recall
  Am               F
Sometimes I just can't but help but wonder who this man is
  Am              G      Am
And if when he is gone will he remember me at all

 Am                 F
I watch him close he works just like a piston in an engine
  Am               C      G
He only stops to take a drink and smoke a cigarette
   Am         F
When the day is ended, I look outside my window
   Am         G      Am
There on the horizon, Mariano's silhouette

  Am              F
He sits upon a stone in a south-easterly direction
 Am                C        G
I know my charts I know that he is thinking of his home
   Am             F
I've never been the sort to say I'm in to intuition
  Am             G           Am
But I swear I see the faces of the ones he calls his own

   Am                  F
Their skin is brown as potters clay, their eyes void of expression
   Am                   C         G
Their hair is black as widow's dreams, their dreams are all but gone
    Am            F
They're ancient as a vision of a sacrificial virgin
  Am         G      Am
Innocent as crying from a baby being born

   Am               F
They hover around a dying flame and pray for his protection
   Am               C         G
Their prayers are all but answered by his letters in the mail
  Am                 F
He sends them colored figures that he cuts from strips of paper
  Am              G       Am
And all his weekly wages, saving nothing for himself

   Am               F
It's been a while since I have seen the face of Mariano
  Am                 C       G
The border guards they came one day and took him far away
 Am                 F
I hope that he is safe down there at home in Guanajuato
 Am              G       Am
I worry though I read there's revolution every day...