Rita Cantu: Music

This song was written for the establishment of the new San Jacinto-Santa Rosa National Monument, on the San Bernardino National Forest. The lyrics fit for most special lands, though, for all are "a monument to hope."

A MONUMENT TO HOPE
© August 2001 Rita Cantu

There’s a warm wind rising from the desert sand
And it calls, enticing, as it sweeps across the land –
And it rises to the mountains and it runs across the slopes,
And it carries in its warm embrace, a strong new song of hope.

And the wild ones hear it, feel it in the breeze.
The grass bends before it as it dances through the trees.
And among the ones who live here there’s a sense of something new –
With memories old as Ancient Ones, the legends now come true.

CHORUS
El sueno esta aqui,
El tiempo es ahorra,
La tierra es verdad,
La gente estan listo…

And it’s here and it’s now,
And it’s this land that we touch somehow…
Where past meets promise in this new day,
And we stand together to meet and make…
A Monument to Hope!

Where the Santa Rosas and San Jacintos stand …
Here the proud Cahuilla have lived upon the land,
And the palms embrace oases where the desert drinks its fill,
And the cougar and the bighorn and the eagle roam at will.

On the land is written the peoples’ story clear,
From the times of conquest to the peaceful knowing here
That we must think like a mountain for the young ones yet to come
For this land and these, our cultures, are the gifts that we’ll pass on.

CHORUS
El sueno esta aqui (the dream is here)
El tiempo es ahorra, (the time is now)
La tierra es verdad, (the land is true)
La gente estan listo… (the people are ready…)

And it’s here and it’s now,
And it’s this land that we touch somehow…
Where past meets promise in this new day,
And we stand together to meet and make…
A Monument to Hope!