Mariano chords by Robert Earl Keen

Chords with lyrics

• Capo on 2nd

Mariano
By: Robert Earl Keen

Capo 2nd Fret


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

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

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

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

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

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

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