ORIMERAWhen I Saw Your Face
He thought he would recognise danger in their clothes or the way they stood. When the person turns, he sees tired eyes and hands shaking like his own.
Original lyrics and translation
Read the English original, the Spanish translation, or both texts stanza by stanza.
Notes on the translation
“Dejé de ver un enemigo” describes a change in how someone is seen. The history and pain remain.
The references to clothes and blood belong to the narrator’s initial prejudice.
The translation accompanies the original lyrics, preserves their stanzas and is not adapted for singing.
What the warnings had left out
Editorial reading
Before coming closer, the narrator believes he knows what he will find. For years he has built a figure from the warnings he received: someone different, dangerous, recognisable from a distance. Certainty has grown without the need for an encounter.
When the person turns, that explanation stops working. There is weariness in their eyes and a tremor in their hands that he recognises in his own. Neither raises a voice. For a moment, they remain there, and the learned story cannot take the place of the face.
At the end, the lyrics return to history and pain. They are still there. The change happens in the person looking: he can no longer return this person as easily to the anonymous group of “them”. He has seen something his warnings did not know how to tell.
The encounter keeps its uncertainty. They do not yet know what to do with it. The song ends in a gaze that has lost a certainty before finding an answer.
The difficulty of reconsidering a certainty
While someone remains far away, it is easy to believe we already know them. Up close, details appear that the old explanation did not account for. The narrator has to decide what deserves more trust: what he sees or what he expected to find.
In this song, shared fear opens that gap. Recognising it is not enough to establish trust. It does change how honestly the narrator will be able to keep speaking about the person he has seen.
What happens when a face contradicts everything we learned?
After the song
Both stay still. Their hands shake, and the old explanation can no longer name the person opposite.