As Happy a New Year as you can have - and keep on singing.

I just now opened a book about vaqueros and gauchos and such ("Lost Cowboys" by the singer Hank Wangford), and the first lines I saw were from from a roughish English version of Martin Fierro:

And now begins the saddest part
Of my tale of trouble and grief,
Although the whole of my life, God knows
Has been nothing more than a chain of woes
Yet the suffering soul that sings its dole
In singing finds relief.