[Intro — frame drum at walking pace, nylon-string guitar, dry and close] [spoken, flat, close] La Mancha. He came home beaten, and he went to bed. He slept six hours. Then he woke up. [Verse 1] He woke and he knew what his name had been — not the knight, the other one, the one on the paper nobody reads. He said the mist has gone out of my head. He said I was mad. He said it twice. [Chorus — low unison, mixed male and female voices] Get up, señor. Rocinante's in the yard. We'll go to the fields and be shepherds instead. We'll find her behind a hedge somewhere — the greatest madness is dying in your bed. [Notary — flat, dry, read aloud, not sung] To Sancho Panza, such monies as are owed him. To my niece, all that remains — provided she marry no man who has read a book of knights. [Verse 2 — dry, close] I told them it was me. I pulled the girth too loose. That's why the horse went down, that's why he lost. Give me the blame and give him back the armour. He looked at me the way a man looks at a road he's left. [Verse 3] The notary wrote that he had never read in any book of knights, of a knight who died so quietly, so much in his own bed, with everyone who loved him at his side. [Chorus — low unison, mixed male and female voices] Get up, señor. Rocinante's in the yard. We'll go to the fields and be shepherds instead. We'll find her behind a hedge somewhere — the greatest madness is dying in your bed. [Outro — single bell, guitar thinning] [spoken, flat, close] They buried Alonso Quixano the Good. The pen was hung on a wire and left there. For him alone was Don Quixote born, and Don Quixote for him.
