Groups - sabor de engaño

this one goes out to mi compa rodneyp

Sabor de engaño tienen tus ojos cuando me miran
Sabor de engaño siento en tus labios cuando me besan
No eres sincera cuando me dices que aún me quieres
Y en tus palabras se nota el filo de la traición.

Es imposible seguir fingiendo de esta manera
Yo te agradesco con toda el alma tu noble empeño
Y te prometo sentirme fuerte cuando me digas
Que no me amas Que es para otro tu corazon.

I like to sing this in the shower. (I'll spare you the recording) its a lovely song but i particularly like it because i had a bit of a subjunctive epiphany back when i was learning the words.  (and indeed, the subjunctive)

I tend to translate songs im learning into english first, so that im not just parroting words that i dont understand, and towards the end of the song, I got a bit lost so I had to mentally reconstruct the spanish lyric from my english translation. Well Stap mi vitals, I got it right. I was so pleased with myself as i truly felt the penny drop.

Its the only cuando in the song that takes the subjunctive so I could have been forgiven for singing cuando me dices (i've already sung it once) but the fact is that this time round, she hasnt told him yet. He knows its coming and is preparing himself for the news but the action of telling is not "actual", its still in the future, it may not happen. (tchyeah right, he's toast)

The other cuandos all speak of the present/past so there is no ambiguity about the actions that follow, the taste of betrayal "is" bitter and the insincerity, has been noted but a future "when" is really only a "when(stroke/)if." If the line were, "cuando me dices" it would mean that she regularly tells him that its over which would make no sense at all.

The subjunctive may be just a friend you havent met (or recognized) yet.

Your eyes are full of lies when they look at me
I taste deception on your lips when they kiss me
you arent sincere when you tell me you still love me
and I can discern the trecherous edge in your words

Its impossible to continue pretending like this
I applaud with all my soul  your noble effort
and i promise to steel myself for when you should tell me
that you dont love me that your heart is for another.

(wow ive made him sound like sound like a stuffy closed off arristo, que raro)

it now also occurs to me that had i written "if the line was" instead of "if the line were" I would have had to have been  referring to a line that had already existed as was is "to be" in the indicative (oh yes, try saying that when youre drunk. past present and infinitive in sequence, now i can die happy) you absolutely "need" to say "were" to illustrate the hypothetical nature of the line. So the next time someone suggests to you that "if something hypothetical was.." stop them and ask when exactly was it that it was?..... its time for my medication i think.