Certainty



If it is real the white light
Of this lamp, real
The hand that writes, are they real
The eyes that watch what is written?

From one word to another
What I say vanishes.
I know that I live
Between two parentheses.

Octavio Paz

                  Here


My steps in this street
Resound
              In another street
Where
          I hear my steps
Passing in this street
Where

Only the mist is real


Octavio Paz

                           The Other



He invented a face.
                             Behind it
He lived, died, and came to life again
Many times.
                    His face
Today has wrinkles in that face.
His wrinkles have no face.

Octavio Paz

                  Small Town



The rocks are time
                             The wind
Centuries of wind
                      The trees are time
People are rock
                       The wind
Folds back on itself and is buried
In the day of rock

There is no water but eyes shine


Octavio Paz

                The Fire of Every Day


As the air
               forms and unforms
over pages of geometry,
over planetary mesas,
its invisible buildings:
                               man.
His language is hardly a grain,
though it burns,
                     in the palm of space.

Syllables are incandescences.
They also are plants:
                                   their roots
construct dwellings of sound.
                                            Syllables
entangle and disentangle,
                                     they play
at similarities and dissimilarities.

Syllables:
               mature in foreheads,
flourish in mouths.
                              Their roots
drink in the night, consume light.
                                        Languages:
incandescent trees
of foliage and rain.

Lightning strike vegetations,
geometries of echos:
over a sheet of paper
the poem forms
                        like the day
over the palm of space.

Octavio Paz

                  I See a Bee Going Around . . .





i see a bee going around this bee no longer exists
little fly with bright red pads as time and again your
      flight beats on
i incline my head lacking proof
i follow a string that marks at least a presence or
      a situation
i listen adorning the silence with incoming waves
that stir up turn over our confused echos as i sing
       in a high voice
stop, shadow of stars in the eyebrow of a man
      out for a walk
who carries on his back a frail golden woman
      mirror of herself
all is lost the weeks are shut in
i look conducting the wind with a secure proposal
like a flower which must scent the air
i open the quiet autumn i visit the sites of shipwrecks
in the depths of the sky birds appear like
       letters
and the dawn makes itself felt like the rind of a fruit
or perhaps you sink your feet somewhere else now
the day is of fire and it shores itself up in colors
the sea full of green clothes its saliva murmurs i am
      the sea
the stirring lured an uneasy crate
my soul is fresh with all my breathing
i suffocate beside antarctic nights
i put on the moon like a hyacinth flower knifewound
      of my sorrowful tear
here i am and this is my life with all my feet resembling each other
i turn a somersault i’m filled with transparent terror
i am alone in an exhibit without windows
without having to make discarded itineraries
i watch the walls fill themselves with snails like the sides
       of a boat,
absorbed deeply, i glue my face to them
following a clock not loving the night i wish it would pass
with snakeskin and lights
garland of the cold my belt twists itself in turn
i am the mare who galloped alone losing pursuit
       of the sad dawn
i accompany in my deafness an unceasing hollow
       trembling
the residents put to bed jump like rubber bands or fish
my wings absorb as a pavilion some forgotten park
and the ports threaten us like abandoned horseshoes
oh it surprises me song of the delirious carp
like a tightrope walker in love or the first fisherman
poor man, who, isolated, shivers like a drop,
a square of time strictly immobile


Pablo Neruda

               Urban Apparition




Did he surge from the earth?
Did he fall from the sky?
He stood among sounds,
wounded,
immobile,
in silence,
buried before the afternoon,
before the inevitable,
his veins attached
to shock,
to asphalt,
with his partings fallen,
with his saintly eyes,
everything, everything naked,
almost blue, of such whiteness.

They spoke of a horse.
I believe it was an angel.


Oliverio Girondo

           Reunion Under the New Flags



Who has lied?  The foot of the lily
broken, unfathomable, darkened, replete
with wounds and dark splendor!
Everything, the norm of wave upon wave upon wave,
the imprecise amber tomb
and the rugged spots of the wheat stalk!
I melted my chest in this, I listened to
the mournful salt, by night
I went planting my roots:
I came upon the bitterness of the earth:
It was all for my night or the lightning strike:
quota of secret wax in my head
and the spilling out of ashes in my footsteps.

And for whom did I search this cold pulse
but for death?
And what instrument did I lose in the abandoned
darkness, where no one hears me?
No,
             it was already time, flee,
shadows of blood,
icy star, recede to the step of human steps
and bid goodbye to my feet black shadow!

Of men like me I’ve got the same wounded hand,
I sustain the same red cup
and the same enraged amazement:
                                    one day
beating with human dreams a savage
steed arrived
at my devouring night
so that I could join my wolf steps
with those of man.
                                  And so, reunited,
stubbornly central, I don’t look for asylum
in the hollows of sobbing:  I display
the bee’s trunk:  radiant bread
for the man’s child:  in the mystery the blue
prepares itself
for watching over a wheat stalk leagues from blood.

Where is your place in the rose?
Where is your starry eyelid?
Have you forgotten those sweaty fingers
that go mad reaching for the sand?
                                     Peace for you, shadowed sun,
peace for you, forehead blind,
there’s a burning space for you along the way,
there are rocks without mystery in the roads,
there are silences of jail like an inflamed star,
naked, out of control, thinking of hell.

Together against the wailing!
                         It’s the high hour
for earth and perfume, look at this face
just escaped from the awful salt,
look at this bitter mouth that smiles,
look at this new heart who salutes you
with its extravagant flower, golden and determined.


Pablo Neruda

                                 Barcarole




If only you will touch my heart,
if only you would put your mouth in my heart,
your fine mouth, your teeth,
if you would place your tongue like a red arrow
there where my dusky heart beats,
if you will breathe in my heart, next to the sea, crying,
it would sound with a dark echo; with the sound
of tired train wheels,
like vacillating waters,
like leaves in Autumn,
like blood,
with a sound of humid flames burning the sky,
sounding like dreams or branches or rain,
or horns of a sad port;
if you will breathe in my heart, next to the sea,
like a white ghost,
at the border of foam,
in the middle of wind,
like an unchained ghost, at the banks of the sea, crying.

Like an absence extended, like a sudden bell,
the sea shares the sound of the heart,
raining, darkening, in one coast alone,
night falls without doubt,
and its gloomy blue in the banner of a shipwreck
populates planets of hoarse silver.

And the heart sounds like a bitter snail,
come, oh sea, oh lament, oh molten fright
scattered in misfortunes and rickety waves.

If you would exist suddenly, on a gloomy coast
circled by the dying day,
facing a new night,
full of waves,
and you will breathe in my heart cold with fear,
you will breathe in the flight of a flaming dove,
they would sound their black syllables of blood,
they would grow their incessant red waters,
and I would sound, I would sound in shadows,
I would sound like death,
I would call like a tube filled with wind or sobs
or a bottle spraying shock in gushes.

So it is, and the lightning would cover your braids
and the rain would come in through your open eyes
to prepare the cry that you deafly envelop,
and the black waves of the sea will gyrate around
you, with great claws, and squawks, and flight.

Do you want to be a ghost who breathes, alone,
next to the sea its sterile, sad instrument?
If only you will call,
your prolonged sound, your wicked whistle,
your order of wounded waves,
someone would come,
someone would,
from the heights of islands, from the red depth
of the sea,
someone would come, someone would come.

Someone would come, breathing with fury,
resounding like the siren of a broken boat,
like a lament,
like a neighing amid foam and blood,
like a ferocious water sounding and biting itself.

In the marine season
its snail-shadow gyrates like a shout,
the seabirds look down on it and flee,
their list of sounds, their gloomy jails
stand up to the shores of the lone ocean.


Pablo Neruda

                      Ode to Time



Inside you your age
increasing,
inside me my age
gone wandering.
Time is decided,
its bell doesn’t sound,
it augments, strolls,
inside of us,
it appears
like deep water
in a glance
and next to the burning
lashes of your eyes
a blade of grass, the footprint
of a minuscule river,
a tiny dried star
ascending to your mouth.
Time raises
its threads
to your hair,
but in my heart,
like a honeysuckle
is your fragrance,
lively like a fire.
It’s beautiful
as we are living
aging alive.
Every day
was a transparent rock,
every night
for us
a black rose
and this wrinkle in your face or mine
are rock or flower,
memory of lightning.
My eyes have worn out in your beauty.
but you are my eyes.
I grew tired perhaps beneath my kisses
your chest duplicated,
but everyone has seen in my joy
your secret splendor.
Love, that matters
to time,
like itself that raised two flames
or parallel thorns
my body and your sweetness,
tomorrow I will maintain them
or thresh them
and with their same invisible fingers
I will erase that identity that separates us
handing us a victory
of one single being, final, beneath the earth.


Pablo Neruda

                            Life


May others deal with the charnel house . . .
                                                                The world
shines a naked color of apples:  rivers
drag a tide of wild medallions
and over the land thrive Rosalia the Sweet
and Juan her companion . . .
                                                                Castles
are formed of hard rock, and mud, soft as grapes,
builds my house with remnants of wheat.
Wide earth, love, sullen bells,
fights reserved for the aurora,
tresses of love that await me,
sleeping deposits of turquoise:
houses, roads, waves that construct
a statue erased by dreams,
bakeries in the twilight,
scholarly clocks in the sand,
circular poppies of wheat,
and these darkened hands that knead
the materials of my life:
toward life the oranges ignite
over the throng of destinies!
May the gravediggers scrape
the ill-fated earth:  may they uncover
the ashen fragments without light,
and speak the language of worms.
I have in front of me only seeds,
radiant unravellings and sweetness.

Pablo Neruda

                                Rimas


                                   XL



                  Her hand in my hands,
                  Her eyes in my eyes,
                  Her loving head
                  Across my shoulder,
                  God knows how many times,
                  With lazy step,
                  We have wandered together
                  Under the high elms
                  That from her house give
                  Shadow and mystery to her porch
                  And yesterday ... hardly a year
                  Passed like a breath,
                  With what exquisite grace,
                  With what admirable daring
                  A casual friend said to me
                  When we presented ourselves,
                  -- I think that I have seen
                  You somewhere -- Ah! fools,
                  Who come from the salons
                  Well meaning neighbors
                  Who walk there in the hunt
                  For gallant confusions:
                  What history you have lost!
                  What delicacy so fine
                  To be devoured
                  (sotto voce):  in a ring,
                  Behind a fan
                  Of feathers and gold!

                   ................................................


                  Discrete and dignified moon,
                  Tall and bushy elms,
                  Walls of her house,
                  Threshold to her portico,
                  Quiet, may the secret
                  Not leave your lips!
                  Quiet, for my part,
                  I have forgotten everything:
                  And she . . . and she . . . there is no mask
                  To match her face!
   


                  Gustavo Adolfo Becquer
                 
                 

                 Ode to my Socks



Maru Mori brought me
a pair
of socks
that she knitted with hands
of a shepherdess,
two soft socks
like hares.
I put
my feet in them
as in
two
boxes
knitted
with twilight’s thread
and sheep’s hides.

Violent socks,
my feet were
two woolen
fish,
two big sharks
of ultramarine blue
crossed
by a braid of gold,
two gigantic blackbirds,
two canyons:
my feet
were honored
in this way
by
celestial
socks.
They were
so handsome
that at first
my feet appeared to me
unacceptable
like two decrepit
firemen, firemen
unworthy
of that embroidered
fire,
of those luminous
socks.

Nevertheless
I resisted
the sharp temptation
to keep watch over them
as schoolboys
protect
fireflies,
as scholars
collect
sacred documents,
I resisted
the furious impulse
to put them
in a golden
cage
and to give them
birdseed and
the pulp of rosy melon
every day.
Like discoverers
who in the jungle
submit the rare green
deer
to the spit
and eat it
with remorse,
I stretched
my feet
and wrapped myself in
the
beautiful
socks
and
later in my shoes.
And this
is the moral of my ode:
two times is beauty
beauty
and that which is good is doubly
good
when speaking of two
woolen socks
in Winter.

Pablo Neruda

                  Everyone



Perhaps I won’t be, perhaps I couldn’t,
I wasn’t, I didn’t see, I am not:
what is this?  And in what June, in what wood
did I grow until now, did I continue being born?

I didn’t grow, I didn’t grow, I kept on dying?

I repeated in the doors
the sound of the sea,
of the bells:
I asked after myself, with delight
(later with anxiety)
with a small bell, with water,
with sweetness:
I always arrived late.
I was far from my prior self
I didn’t respond to myself then,
I had gone so many times.

And I went to the next house,
to the next woman,
to all parts
to ask after myself, after you, after everyone:
everything was empty
because simply it wasn’t today
it was tomorrow.

Why search in vain
at every door where we won’t exist
because we haven’t arrived yet?

So it was that I knew
that I was exactly like you
and everyone.


Pablo Neruda

,

                 You, for My Thought



What stretched the earth
into a howl?
What was the sky sounding in its blue bells
from the pallid dream of a blood that suffers?

What has crossed a river,
cry for cry?
What have twenty crystal gallops crossed,
with their twenty mysteries of clarity?

What lifted the powerful
mountain?
What enlarged the high ice of its immaculate jungle?
What did the rocks grow to cover your face?

What made the wind thick
like a stone,
like an immense wheel of turbulent glass
gyrating between your temples and the sound of my kisses?

What of the space that makes mockery
of my eyes?
Ah, no!  I know the road I must take to find you.
Death has watched me walking through its valleys.

Sara de Ibanez

                  Nocturnal Rose




I too speak of the rose.
But my rose isn’t the cold rose
nor that of a child’s skin,
nor the rose that gyrates
so slowly that its movement
is a mysterious form of quietude.

It’s not the thirsty rose,
nor the bleeding wound,
nor the rose crowned with thorns,
nor the rose of the resurrection.

It’s not the rose of naked petals,
nor the waxen rose,
nor the flame of silk,
nor the rose of fire.

It’s not the fickle rose,
nor the secret ulcer,
nor the punctual rose that keeps time,
nor the sea’s compass rose.

No, it’s not the rose rose
but the uncreated rose,
the submerged rose,
the nocturne,
the immaterial rose,
the hollow rose.

It’s the rose of touch in the darkness,
it’s the rose that advances inflamed,
the rose of pink fingernails,
the rose yolk of avid fingers,
the digital rose
the blind rose.

It’s the rose frame of hearing,
rose of the ear,
the spiral of sound,
the rose of the shell always abandoned
in the highest spume of the cushion.

It’s the rose embodied in the mouth,
the rose that speaks awake
as if it were sleeping.
It’s the rose half-open
from which flows shadows,
the rose a skirt
that folds and expands
evoked, invoked, destined,
it is the labial rose,
the wounded rose.

It’s the rose that opens eyelids,
the vigilant rose, watchful,
the rose of the expectant insomniac.

It’s the rose of smoke,
the rose of ash,
the black rose of carbon diamond
that silently perforates the darkness
and doesn’t occupy a place in space.

Xavier Villaurrutia

                   Hypothesis of Your Body




I know that they won’t believe me as a mirror without back
that a movement nails your naval vortex
where moments thousands first and second in a rock of pique
are already waiting for me gyrating in you.

Although he would say that you had no sea
nor that the foam of your interior of rock inhabits
nor that by the frothing of blood spitted out you are less alive
or worm-eaten,
but for the frequency of your freckles something congregated.

Because they waited for you when you were visible
if you raised your hands of concrete
clad in workingman’s clothes without calling card
while a great calling of flowers and pianos sounded
and in your profound pain you waste another violet
if solitary,
which in any case could not be possible.

All in an ordinary breeze arranged with feeling . . .

Because they waited in fear that he would clamor for your death:
“I compare you to a lighthouse”
explaining your hair slowly in the night.

It isn’t comparing.


                                          II



I imagine you naked inside
like a leonine dove in the earth
without a marine substance to torment.

Death in Life.

Yes or no a voyager in your forehead
 (not in thought nor with venom here
 the snake headless at the foot of the river
not leaving a crisp beach of singing sirens
nor a seal who reeks of spume and unravels
not in a humid moon in the rutting of animals
large for the ark, where they stand
tame lionesses doves and elephants)
by your flesh of stone at your chest of milk.
Myth in summary, but I play.

Life in Death.

How many roads lead to your navel
if made of roots grapple in the deep port of the earth
gateway to my earth yours of the sacred lock.

Tesomosme,  Mesomoste.
I will dig you a sepulcher in my other sex.
Dig for me a sepulcher in your other sex.
That I may die  You will live I will live You will die
I don’t distinguish ourselves.

Sesame.


                                  III



I confess that I arrive at your port underground
like the rock in sleep vegetable and alive sleeping
I have my house there where I await my spider blind
the same alive or dead your secret like silence.


Jose Coronel Urtrecho

               Nihil Novum




Don’t search for anything new, oh my song!
nothing is hidden beneath the skyscraper,
nothing in the machine that climbs to the sky,
nothing has changed since Solomon.

Very old are man and his passion
he keeps in the new day an ancient yearning,
under the new night as to insomnia
in the same way that my heart beats.

Don’t let yourself be deceived by new continents,
with their plants, their beasts and their people,
nor their songs with new accents.

Everything they say has already been said:
alone there remains us the air and its whim
of vague sounds carried by the wind.


Jose Coronel Urtrecho

                                Ancient Riverbank




It has rained so much since then,
Then, when teeth weren’t flesh, but
Small days like an ignorant river
Calling to his parents because he feels tired,
It has rained so much since then,
That the step is already forgotten in his head.

Some say yes, others say no;
But yes and no aren’t small waves,
Balance of a sky within another sky,
As a love is inside another love,
As forgetting is inside of forgetting.

As torture with ire asks for fiestas
Amid the most virile nights,
We won’t do anything but cut into life,
Smiling blindly in defeat,
While the years, dead as to a dead man,
Open their tomb of extinguished stars.


Luis Cernuda

                       Flesh of the Sea



In a few brief days it will be Autumn in Virginia,
When the hunters, with a glance of rain,
Return to their native earth, the tree that doesn’t forget,
Lambs of an awful appearance,
In a few brief days it will be Autumn in Virginia.

If, bodies narrowly entangled,
Lips in the most intimate key,
Who will tell him, skin made of shipwrecks
Or the pain of the closed door,
Pain facing pain,
Without awaiting love at all?

Love comes and goes, look;
Love comes and goes,
Without giving alms to mutilated clouds,
From clothes, rags of the earth,
And he doesn’t know, he will never know.

It’s useless now passing a hand over Autumn.

Luis Cernuda

                       Are They All Happy?




The honor of living gloriously with honor,
The patriotism toward a nameless country,
The sacrifice, the obligation of yellow lips,
They’re not worth an iron devouring
Little by little some sad body because of themselves.

Below, then, virtue, order, misery;
beneath all, all, except defeat,
Defeat to the teeth, to that frozen space
Of a head split in two by solitude,
Knowing nothing more than that living is to be alone with death.

Nor can anyone expect that bird with a woman’s arms.
With the voice of man deliciously darkened,
Because a bird, although loved,
Doesn’t merit waiting for, like some monarch who
Awaits the maturing of his towers to rotten fruit.

We may cry alone,
May cry to an eternal wave,
To sink so many skies,
Touching then solitudes with dissected hand.

Luis Cernuda

                                     Voyager



What climate is this of shifting sands and beyond its age
What country of clamoring and humid sombreros
In vigilance of horizons
What great silence over the earth without object
Preferred only of certain words
That no one even fulfills his destiny
It’s not changing sadness for a window or a
     reasonable flower
Nor is it the sea in place of a memory
It’s an aspiration in its night
It’s life with all its seeds
It’s explaining itself alone and decorated like a mountain
     that bids goodbye
It’s the fight of hours and streets
It’s the breath of trees invading stars

They are squandered rivers
It’s the fact of being loved and bleeding amid waves
Of having meat and eyes toward total harmony
And sailing from depth to depth amid fragile ghosts
And flying like the dead around the bell tower
Walking for the orphaned time of its suns
From dream to reality and reality to a vision tangled in the night
And always in man a secret dialog
In jumping of barriers always in man

Vicente Huidobro

                  Sailor



That bird who flies for the first time
Moves out of the nest looking backwards

With my finger on my lips
                                           I have called you

I invented water games
In the tops of trees

I made you the most beautiful of all women
So beautiful that you blush in the afternoon

                            The moon moves away from us
                             And hurls a crown over the pole

I have made rivers run


                             that never existed

From a cry I raised a mountain
And around we danced a new dance

                             I clipped all the roses

And I taught a snow white bird to sing

We will march wildly through the months

I am the old sailor
                            who sews together ripped horizons



Vicente Huidobro

                                     Depart



                   The boat moved away
                    Over concave waves

Of what throat without feathers
                                                   sprouted song

                    A cloud of smoke and a handkerchief
                    Fought against the wind

The solstice flowers
Flourished in the void

And in vain we have cried
                                           without being able to gather them

                     The last verse will never be sung

Lifting a child up to the wind
A woman said goodbye from the beach

     ALL THE SWALLOWS HAVE BROKEN THEIR WINGS



Vicente Huidobro

             The Water Mirror



My mirror, flowing through nights,
Forms a stream and moves away from my home.

My mirror, deeper than the earth
Where all the swans have drowned.

In a green pond at the city wall
Your anchored nakedness sleeps.

Over its waves, under sleepwalking skies,
My reveries distance themselves like boats.

On foot in the stern you will always see me singing.
A secret rose swells up in my chest
And a drunken nightingale flaps its wings on my finger.


Vicente Huidobro

                       To Flee



How he’ll toss me out to roam
over the world without form!
How he’ll direct me to run
driving an auto without shadow.

By the landscape without form
elusive . . . skidding:
in fleeing and in fleeing
transfused . . . thawed.

By mountains without memory,
by useless seas, insomniac,
of sulphur, silver, and mercury . . .
total amnesia, unfrozen.

How he’ll direct me to run
-- nights, trails, seas, names,
haste, clouds, towers, worlds --

without return -- liberation --
What inmate -- free -- in escape!
With haste at his back, left behind.
Free -- what inmate! -- in escape.

How he’ll direct me to run
driving an auto without shadow;
without the support of the day,
freed of yesterday and of tomorrow . . .
untied, white, eternal!


Emilio Ballagas

                Wind of the Light in June



Carry me wherever you like,
wind of the light in June,
-- whirlpool of the eternal.

Where to?
If I have already gone, if already I return.
If already I want nothing, nothing;
Nor do I have it, not that
I was dreaming of yesterday.

Now for not wanting and not knowing what I want
I want everything . . . What joy!
What happiness to drown in your surf!
I’m like a child who premieres
the pure emotion of Wanting.

Oh, the foam, the distance
and those voices, oranges
-- touch, color, and fragrance --
that stir in the fronds
like spherical surprises!

Carry me wherever you want
-- you embrace me, you defeat me --
so now I yield, docile,
to your wandering will,
light of playing and of fleeing . . .

Carry me, carry me, carry me
sequester me in the eternal
--- anxiety, surf, hindquarters, mane --
wind of the light in June.

Emilio Ballagas

                   


                   Furniture



For spitting secrets in your womb
for the notary
who joined our kisses with a pencil,
for landscapes that remain imprisoned
in our cushion of plucked trills,
for the panther even there is a finger
for your tongue
that of a sudden scorns all surfaces,
for revolutions of the earth without borders
in your wave of shipwrecks:  your womb;
and for the luxury imparted by your breasts
and of those the dog cleans while it licks you
an angel that barks at you if you clothe yourself,
four paws that think while they watch over you;
all of this costs me only your body,
an unusual volume of wages bargained over,
a putting of myself  to sew broken silences,
a putting of myself amongst detectives,
to care for me in the corners of your origin,
to mend my heroism of an ancient phonograph,
all year washing my ingenuous pockets,
turning back the watch of my smile,
softening the day when the visitor arrives,
imposing grammar on his noise,
putting in order
the sensible madhouse of your sex;
leave me now
that I might join with him my doubts at the broom,
I want to stay clean like a poor man’s plate;
you,
who filled my horseblood,
you,
who if I watch you my eye neighs
twist your instinct as if in a corner
and we may talk alone,
without use,
without the noise
of the rented furniture of your body.


Manuel del Cabral

                       Sonnets on Death



                                   I


I will lower you to the humble and lonely earth
from the frozen niche in which men have put you.
Men haven’t known that I must die in it,
and that we must sleep on the same pillow.

I will awaken you in the lonely earth
with a mother’s sweetness for her sleeping son,
and the earth must soften the child’s cradle
upon receiving yours, the body of a wounded child.

Later I will sprinkle earth and the dust of roses,
and in the blueness and light dusting of the moon,
the remnant lights will remain prisoners.

I will move away singing my beautiful revenge
because no one’s hand will descend in this
secret depth to argue with me your handful of bones!


                               II



This deep tiredness will grow older one day,
and the soul will tell the body it doesn’t wish to follow
anymore, dragging its weight through reddened roads
from where men go, content to live . . .

You will feel that at your side they dig with spirit,
that another sleeper arrives in the quiet city.
I will wait until they have covered me completely . . .
and later we can talk for an eternity!

Only then will you know why your flesh
no longer matures in deep graves,
why you had to descend, without fatigue, to sleep.

There will be light in the zone of fate, darkened;
you will know that in our alliance was a stellar sign
and, the enormous pact broken, you had to die . . .


                                     III




Wicked hands took your life since that day
when, at a signal from the stars, your nursery
was left, snowed upon by lilies.  In joy it flourished.
Wicked hands entered tragically.

And I said to the gentleman: -- “They carry him
down mortal roads.  Beloved shadow that doesn’t
know how to guide!  Uproot him, Sir, from those
fatal hands or you bury him in the deep sleep
you know how to give!

I can’t cry to him, I can’t follow him!
A black tempest wind pushes his boat.
Come back to my arms or you will cut his flower.”

The rosy boat of his life came to a stop . . .
I don’t know love, I don’t have piety?
You, who are going to judge me, you understand it, Sir!


Gabriela Mistral

                We Were All Going to Be Queens




We were all going to be queens,
of four kingdoms over the sea:
Rosalia with Efigenia
and Lucila with Soledad.

In the valley of Elqui, surrounded
by a hundred mountains or more,
as sacrifices or tributes
they burn in red or saffron.

We would utter it intoxicated,
and we had it in truth,
that we would all be queens
and that we would come to the sea.

With seven year old braids,
and clear robes of cloth,
pursuing thrushes who fled
through the shadow of fig trees.

Of the four kingdoms, we would say,
unquestionable like the Qu’ran,
that for being grand and upright
they would reach the sea.

Four spouses would marry,
at the time for marrying,
and they were kings and cantors
like David, king of Judah.

And for our kingdoms to be great,
they would have, without fault,
green seas, seas of algae,
and the crazy bird of the pheasant.

And to have all the fruits,
tree of milk, tree of bread,
we wouldn’t cut into the lignum tree
or bite into metal.

We were all going to be queens,
and truthfully would reign;
but not one has been queen
not in Arauco or Copan . . .

Rosalia kissed a sailor
already wed to the sea,
and to the kisser, in the Guaitecas,
he swallowed the storm.

Soledad raised seven brothers
and left her blood in the bread,
and her eyes remained black
from never having seen the sea.

In the vines of Montegrande,
with her pure breast of whitened bread,
she rocked the sons of other queens
and never her own.

Efigenia crossed a stranger
in the path, and without speaking,
followed him, not knowing his name,
because he resembled the sea.

And Lucila, who spoke to a river,
a mountain, and sugar canes,
in moons of madness
acquired a true kingdom.

In the clouds she counted ten sons
and in the salt mines her reign,
in the rivers she has seen spouses
and her cloak in the storm.

But in the valley of Elqui, where
there are a hundred mountains or more,
the others who came are singing
and those that come will sing:

“In the earth we will be queens,
and in truth will reign
and being great our kingdoms,
we all will come to the sea.”


Gabriela Mistral

                            Bread



They  left a bread on the table,
half burned, half white,
picked at on top and open
in some crumbs of snow.

It seems new to me or it is unseen
and still he hasn’t fed me,
but I turn over his crumb, sleepwalking,
touch and odor that I had forgotten.

It smells of my mother when she gave her milk,
smells of three valleys that I have passed over:
Aconcagua, Patzcuaro, Elqui,
and my entrails when I sing.

There are no other odors in the living room
and for this he has called me;
and there’s no one in the house at all
except this open bread on a plate,
that with his body he recognized me
and with mine I recognized him.

He has eaten in all climates
the same bread of a hundred brothers:
bread of Coquimbo, bread of Oaxaca,
bread of Santa Ana and of Santiago.

In my childhood I knew him
form of the sun, of fish or of halo,
and I knew my hand its crumb
and the heat of the feathered pigeon . . .

Later I forgot him, until that day
when we came to see each other again,
me with my body of old Sara
and he with his of five years.

Friends dead with whom I ate
in other valleys, feel the steam
of a milled bread in September
and in August the reaping of Castilla.

It’s someone else and its with him we ate
in the earth where they were laid to bed.
I open the crumb and I give them their heat;
I turn them around and I affix their breath.

His hand that I hold overflowing
and the glance pressed into my hand;
I submit a penitent cry
for the forgetting of so many years,
and my face ages
or I am reborn in this discovery.

As the house is found empty,
we are together the freshly encountered,
on this table without flesh or fruit,
the two of us in this human silence,
until we might be one
and our day may be fulfilled . . .

Gabriela Mistral

                                        Cosas


                                             1



I love things I’ve never had
and others that I don’t have now:

I touch a quiet river
halted in chilly pastures,
that without wind shivered
in the orchard that was my orchard.

I watch it as I watched it:
it gives me strange thoughts,
and I play, slowly, with that water
as if with a fish or mystery.

                                         
                                             2


I think in a threshold where I left
happy steps that I no longer have,
and I see in that threshold an ulcer
filled with moss and silence.


                                            3


I search out a verse that I have lost,
that they taught me when I was seven.
There was a woman baking bread
and I see her sacred mouth.


                                          4


An aroma broken in gusts arrives;
I am very happy when I feel it;
this aroma is not of a great delicateness,
rather the odor of almond trees.


                                          5


My senses become children;
I search for a name and cannot figure it out,
and I smell the air and the places
searching out almond trees I cannot find . . .


                                         6


A river always sounds nearby.
It’s been forty years since I felt it.
It’s the singing of my blood
or better a rhythm that I was given.

Oh the river Elqui of my childhood
that I lean against and that I ford.
I’ve never lost it; chest to chest,
like two children, we have each other.

When I dream the mountain range,
I walk through gorges,
and I come listening to them, without respite,
a whistle almost an oath.


                                         7



I see the edge of the Pacific
purplish my archipelago,
and from an island there has remained with me
the acrid smell of a dead kingfisher . . .


                                       8



A back, a grave and sweet back,
ends the dream that I dream.
It is the end of my journey
and I am tired when I arrive.

It is a dead trunk or it is my father,
the vague, ashen back.
I don’t ask, I don’t disturb him.
I lay together, I am quiet and I sleep.


                                     9



I love a rock of Oaxaca
or Guatemala, to which I approach,
red and fixed like my face
whose crevice gives out a breath.

On going to sleep I stand naked;
I don’t know why I turn it over.
And maybe I’ve never had it
and its my sepulcher I see . . .



Gabriela Mistral

                      Soliloquies of a Soldier


                                    II



I wish to open my veins under the peach trees,
in that distracted Summer of my mouth.
I wish to open my veins in search of your scent,
heavy wheel consumed by bitter poppies.

I ignored your delicate vigilant beehive.
River of butterflies born in my waist.
And I separated the yolks, the trembling of poplars,
and the wind that arrived with a mask of grapes.

I didn’t want to dissolve when I couldn’t see you
but you sustained me with cool olive hands.
Navigating star I couldn’t see your gunwale
but you crossed over me as of a distracted sea.

Now I discover you, such a wounded stranger,
paradise severed, realm of my blood.
An iron herb passes over my face . . .
Only now do my disinherited eyes open.

Now that I can’t demolish your boundary
under my forehead, behind my words.
Touching my old shadow inhabited by orange blossoms,
my blind heart lost in city blocks.

Now I am awake.  Born at last my eyes
treaded upon by smoke, unearthing spiders,
hard stratum of algae with dead watchmen
who ceaselessly devour their frozen roots.

And I cross over you, fierce tunnel of nettles,
whirlpool of swords, vomit of death.
I come seized by the mane of a thorny horse
that flies with burning cities in its gut.

I am awake, awake and obedient to my hands,
like a river of gunpowder curdled in my breath,
now that I am alone and enemy of the air,
dry, uprooted, naked, battling.


Sara de Ibanez

                            Liras

 
                              V



I am going to cry without haste.
I am going to cry until I forget crying
and arrive at a smile
without the stubbornness of fright
to pierce my bones and my song.

By the unarmed tree
that is warmed by a bird’s heart
and without groaning sleeps,
and manages to face a great silence
without this haughty ashen tongue.

By the slight lamb
of tender hoof and pink lips;
by its vibrant snow
that harasses the darkness
and at last from lightning rests.

By the flustered ant
imprisoned in a forest of a hundred leaves;
by its diminutive void
that doesn’t inflame its mystery
and that enormous death wont forgive.

By the cloud that reaches
the threshold of a seedless lily.
Moody tongue
without ecstasy or edge,
not knowing how to die on its knees.

By the herb and the star.
How do your eyes take measure, darkened God?
By the lightest trace
of a shadow on the wall,
my cry has opened its mature crystal.


Sara de Ibanez

                Street of Serpents



A current of arms and backs
directs us
under fans,
pipes,
enormous spectacles
hung in the middle of the street;
unique testament of
a disappeared race of giants.

Seated at the edge of chairs
as if they were to give a start
and begin to dance,
the customers in the cafes
applaud the activity of the waiters,
while the shoeshine men polish shoes,
where you can read
the announcement of Sunday’s bullfight.

With his figurehead faces,
the Cuban arranges the occurrences of the bowsprit,
the landowners enter
into shops selling drinks,
provoking arguments
as if they were aiming to commit murder;
and leaning on the counters,
that simulate barriers,
they toast the throng
a stuffed bull
head sticking out of the wall.

Held tightly in their capes, like bullfighters,
the priests enter the hair salons
for a shave in four-hundred mirrors at a time,
and when they go out in the street
they wear a three-day beard.

In greenhouses
built in circles,
laziness falls as in no place,
and the partners ingest it
with churros or horchata,
to founder in armchairs
with apathy and a laxity of puppets.

Every two-hundred and forty-seven men,
three-hundred and twelve priests
and two-hundred and ninety-three soldiers,
passes a woman.

Oliverio  Girondo

                                 Ballad of the Unseen Sea, Rhythm
                                          in Diverse Stanzas



I haven’t seen the sea.

My eyes,
-- wounded watchmen, fantastic fireflies;
my eyes alert in the night; owners
of the shattered warp,
of astral worlds;
my errant eyes
relatives of the horrid vertigo of the abyss;
my steely Viking eyes, watched over,
my vagrant eyes
haven’t seen the sea . . .

The undulating song of its tremulous curve
hasn’t stirred my dreams,
nor have I heard the erotic moan of its sirens,
nor has my retina been stunned by the bright yellow mercury,
that rolls across its back . . .
Its resonant whirlwinds,
its silences, I never could hear . . . !
its Cyclopean rages, its complaints or its hymns,
nor its valiant mutism when silver and gold
of suns and moons, like perennial cries,
dilute its wealth for the green sapphire . . . !

Nor will I inhale its perfume!

I know of the aromas
of beloved manes . . .
I know of the perfumes of necks, slender
and fragile and tepid,
of breasts where the preferred apples of Venus
hide their breath!
I will imbibe the flasks
where Nirvana sets to fire symbolic sandals,
the aloe and myrrh of Zoroastro the magician . . .
But I will not inhale the salt or the iodine of the sea!

My hungering lips
aren’t slaked by wineskins
in my thirst:
nor do the acerbic wineskins
mitigate the thirst . . .
My lips, crazy, drunken, avid, vagrant,
thoughtful lips
that embitter lamentations and irate gestures
and in a pair of lips -- virginal -- are captured in your net.

I am brother
to the clouds.
Brother to the clouds,
of the vagrant clouds, of the visionaries of space:
wandering ships
that push acres puffs of wind anonymous and cold!
That impel robust impulses fickle and dark!
I am a voyager
of nights.
Voyager of intoxicating nights; sailor
of its limitless gulfs,
of its limitless gulfs, delirious, empty,
-- void of infinity . . .,  void -- I am
a docile sailor,
and my defeated dreams are ships . . .
Defeated ships, courses ignored, cavern
of pirates . . . the sea! . . .

My wandering eyes
--- insatiable voyagers -- know skies, worlds,
know deep nights, engraved and serene,
know tragic nights,
delicious fantasies,
impudent dreams . . .
They know of unique pity,
of pleasures and of tears,
of myths and of science,
of pain
and of love . . . !

My wandering eyes,
my infertile eyes . . . :
my eyes haven’t seen the sea,
I haven’t seen the sea!



Leon de Greiff

                     Ballad of Lost Time


                            I



I have lost time
and I have lost the journey . . .

Nor do I know where I have gone . . .
But yes I saw a landscape
painted in ochre:
faded . . .

Mud, clay, mist; fog, mist, fog
of a turbid fur,
of black feathers.
And mediocre lights. And mediocre lights.
I also saw erect
pines:  they pointed to a confused dome,
ominous, abstruse,
and a grey horizon of circumspect boundaries.
I also saw grave
birds,
grave birds of murky feathers
-- antithetic to man --
I listened to silences, to mutes, without name,
who staggered drunk in the fog . . .
Mud, clay, mist; fog, mist, fog.

I don’t know where I have gone,
and I have lost the journey,
and I have lost time . . .


                             II




I have lost time
and I have lost the journey . . .

Nor do I know where I have gone . . .
But I knew of a twilight of fire
crackling:  voluminous weeds
and burnt lilacs!
(other springs like tranquil emeralds
dissolving).
I sensed, lewdly, capricious odors!
Boiling chrysoprase
shone luxuriously
over the bucolic plains!
Reds I saw and rubies, tremulous wheatfields
in the kiss of caressing winds!
Bleeding poppies I saw, blue-green eras!
I saw wooded fauna:
refined extravagant palaces
All in accord with whistles and flutes,
hunting horns, pastoral bassoons,
and the languid piano
chopinesque,
and unwary voices
and mezzo-men
and the mezzo-soprano.

Nor do I know where I have gone . . .
and I have lost the journey
and I have lost time . . .


                            III



And I have lost time
and I have lost the journey . . .

Nor do I know where I have gone . . .
to see the landscape
in ochre,
faded,
and to see the twilight of fire!

Having been able to watch the hidden
garden in my mediocre worlds!
or having watched without seeing:  sly game,
pointed ruse, subtle strategy, of the Deaf, the Cold, the Blind.



Leon de Greiff

                               Hymn Amongst Ruins




                                          where frothing the Sicilian sea . . .

                                                                                Gongora



Crowned with itself the day extends its feathers.
High yellow cry,
hot fountain in the center of an impartial and
kind sky!
Appearances are beautiful in their momentary truth.

The sea climbs the coast,
fortifies itself between crags, scratches dazzling;
the mountain’s purple wound shines;
a handful of goats is a herd of stones;
the sun adorns itself in an egg of gold and spills out over the sea.
Everything is God.
Broken statue,
living ruins in a world of the dead in life!

(The night falls on Teotihuacan.
On top of the pyramid the young smoke marijuana,
the rutting of guitars resounds.
What herb, what water’s life must give us life,
where the word is unearthed,
the proportion that guides the hymn, the discourse,
the dance, the city, and the balance?
The Mexican song explodes in a curse,
the star of colors extinguishing itself,
rock that closes to us the gates of contact.
Know that earth to earth will age.)

The eyes see, the hands touch.
Enough, here a few things:
prickly pear, thorny coral planet,
masked figs,
grapes with a taste for resurrection,
clams, surly virginities,
salt, cheese, wine, sun baked bread,
From the height of her brownness an islander looks at me,
svelte cathedral dressed in light.
Towers of salt, the white sails of boats
surge against the green pines of the river bank.
Light creates temples in the sea.

(New York, London, Moscow.
The shadow covers the plain with its ghostlike ivy,
with its vacillating shivering vegetation,
its sparse hairs, its throng of rats.
Here and there an anemic sun shudders.
Twisted in mountains that yesterday were cities, Polyphemus yawns.
Below, between the graves, a herd of men crawl.
(Domestic bipeds, their flesh
-- despite recent religious interdictions --
is very favored amongst the rich.
It was only recently that common men considered animals impure.)

To look, to touch beautiful shapes, every day.
The light buzzes; darts and wings.
The wine stain on the tablecloth reeks of blood.
Like the coral its branches in the water
I extend my senses in the living hour:
the instant expires in a yellow concordance,
oh melody, ear of corn filled with minutes,
cup of eternity!

My thoughts split in two, snake, get mixed up,
begin again,
at last they are immobilized, rivers that don’t flow,
delta of blood beneath a sun without twilight.
And everything must stop in this splashing of dead waters?

Day, circular day,
luminous orange of twenty-four slices,
all tinged with the same yellow sweetness!
Intelligence is finally brought to life,
the two enemies are reconciled to each other
and the conscience-mirror liquefies,
becomes a fountain, spring of fables:
Man, tree of images,
words that are flowers that are fruits that are acts.



Octavio Paz

                                    Ode




Who comes in the afternoon strumming his lute over
   the clouds, as if in his home!
Who strums, returning leaves to their trees!
I’ve filled my heart with the shadows of my words;
with the dreams of voices.
And they sound in me, without solace, uncovetous:  you, no one,
   tomorrow, space, solitude, tenderness, air, emptiness, wave,
and never.  I entertain myself with them, the anguish
   of the sky and the hardened solitude
of blood.
I wash my mouth with their absences and I call myself by day
    and night,
and I place them over my head, discovered, to assign
   them to forgetting, before and beneath the zenith
of the plains.
Their gods and bodies I’ve settled between my lips
   forever, praising them;
before me they withstand the air, oh, and the impenetrable
   height of death;
no one sees them as they don’t see the breath that makes them mute
   and governs them strictly.
(The angels walk through scattered space; some carry
   stalks of wheat, others choose red poppies,
and the rest bring seeds for birds amongst
    naked trees.

No one sees them; the light parches my throat they
   scatter their ancient clothing.
I watch them carrying their heads, unhurt by air, and
disappearing rapidly, bathed in clarity, before
   the fury of the night.

By now I’m accustomed to see them, inside me, as
   in those days whose smoke has dissipated
and whose kingdoms stretched out beneath ash
await white lilies without despair.)

I wish I could draw the happiness from myself; to open my eyes,
   immensely, that hurt me,
and to watch, to watch the horizon from behind the void
   of nostalgia, where my shadow,
like a tree, changes leaves in winter.

Love -- time lost!



Ricardo E. Molinari

                Ode to a Profound Sadness




I wish to sing a profound sadness that I won’t forget,
a tough language.  How often.

In my country Autumn is born of a dry flower,
of a few birds; at times I believe of my abandoned nape

or the penetrating steam of certain rivers of the plain
tired of the sun, of the people who at their banks
enjoy a life without majesty.

When you arrive to live amongst sacks of carbon
and you sense that your skin takes hold
of disgust,
of repugnant solitude; that being is an island without carnations,
you desire Autumn, the wind that catches leaves
the same as souls; the wind
that bends without heaviness the drunken herbs,
to envelop them in the solace of death.

No; I wish never to return to this earth;
All my flesh pains me, and where there had been a kiss
the air makes me fester.
In the florid Summer I’ve seen a bluish horse and
a transparent bull
drinking in the breast of rivers, innocent, its blood;
trees of veins, filled,  lost in the tepid labyrinths of the body,
in the oppressed, anxious flesh.  In Summer . . .
My days descended by the shadow of my face
and laid over my gut, my skin pure, murmuring,
enveloped in the sweetest clarity.
Like a madman, deafened, untiring,
the reed shattered the rose, the agitated bedazzling breast,
Without veils, a day without thought rests
indifferently in the void,
without man, with a twilight that comes with a sword.

A filthy brilliance burns me, flowers of the sky,
the great, majestic plains.
I wish to sing this profound sadness unearthed,
but, oh, I feel the sea arriving at my mouth.


Ricardo E. Molinari

                              Sea in the Earth




   No, don’t clamor for that hasty joy
that is latent when the dark music doesn’t vary,
when the dark stream passes indecipherable
like a river that scorns its landscape.

   Happiness doesn’t consist in the wringing of hands
while the world vacillates on its axis,
while light turned to paper
senses that a wind ruffles it smiling.

   Maybe the clamorous sea that in a shoe
will attempt to accommodate itself
   one night,
the infinite sea that wanted to be a dew,
that claimed to rest on a sleeping flower,
that wanted to awaken like a fresh tear.

   The resonant sea turned into a spear
lays in the dryness like a drowning fish,
clamors for that water that could be a kiss,
that could be a chest that rends and drowns.

   But the dry moon doesn’t respond to the reflection
   of pallid scales.
Death is a contraction of a glassy pupil,
it’s the impossibility of agitating arms,
of raising to the sky a cry that will wound.

   Death is the silence in dust, in memory,
it’s grimly stirring a language not of man,
it’s sensing that salt curdles coldly in veins
like an intensely white tree in a fish.

   And so joy, the dark joy of dying,
of understanding that the world is a grain that will dissolve,
that was born for a divine water,
for that immense sea that lays over dust.

  Joy will consist in undoing the minuscule,
in transforming into a sharp thorn,
rest of an ocean that like the light departed,
grain of sand that was a gigantic chest
that exited the throat lying here like a sob.


Vicente Aleixandre

                Childhood and Death




To search out my childhood -- My God!
I ate rotten oranges, old papers, empty pigeon lofts
and I encountered my little body eaten by rats
in the depth of the well with the manes of the mad.
My sailor’s suit
wasn’t soaked in the oil of whales
but had the vulnerable eternity of photographs.
Drowned, yes, well-drowned, sleep, my son, sleep.
Child conquered in school and in the waltz of the wounded rose,
amazed by the dark dawn of hairs over muscles,
amazed by its very man who chewed tobacco
     in his sinister flank.
I hear a dry river filled with jars of preserves
where the sewers sing and the shirts stained with blood
     are thrown.
A river of rotten cats that feigns corollas and anemones
to trick the moon and that leans itself sweetly in them.
Here alone with my drowned self.
Here alone with the breeze of cold mosses and lids
     of tin.
Here, alone, I see that they have already closed the door to me.
They have closed the door to me and there are a group of the dead
who play at target practice and another group of the dead
who search for the rinds of melons in the kitchen
and a recluse, blue, inexplicably dead
who searches for me in the stairs, who puts his hands in
      the well
while the stars fill the locks on the cathedrals with
      ash
and the people stay of a sudden with all the little
      suits.
To search out my childhood -- My God!
I ate squeezed lemons, stables, withered magazines
but my childhood was a rat that fled through
      the dark garden
and wore a gait of gold between its little teeth.


Federico Garcia Lorca

            Considering in the Cold, Impartially





Considering in the cold, impartially,
that man is sad, coughs and, nevertheless,
takes pleasure in his reddened chest;
that the only thing he does is to consist
of days;
that he is a gloomy mammal that combs itself . . .

Considering
that man proceeds smoothly from his job
and affecting his boss, resounds subordinate;
that the diagram of time
is a constant diorama in his medals
and, half-opened, his eyes will study,
from distant times,
his hungering formula of dough . . .

Understanding without effort
that man remains, at times, thinking,
as if wanting to cry,
and, subject to lie down like an object,
makes of himself a good carpenter, sweats, kills,
and later sings, has lunch, buttons himself up . . .

Examining, at last,
his stumbled upon pieces, his lavatory,
his desperation, in terminating his atrocious day, rubbing it out . . .

Considering also
that man is in truth an animal
and, nevertheless, in turning round, gives to me the sadness of his head . . .

Understanding
that he knows that I love him,
that I hate him with feeling and that he is, to me, in sum, indifferent . . .

Considering his general documents
and looking through glasses at that certificate
that proves that he was born very diminutive . . .

I make a sign to him,
he comes,
and I embrace him, passionately.
What more can it be!  Passionately . . .  Passionately . . .


Cesar Vallejo

                           Come, Come You





There where the sea doesn’t beat
where sadness shakes its glassy mane.
where breath softly exhaled
isn’t a metal butterfly but an air.

    An air smooth and soft
where words are murmured as in an ear.
Where weak feathers resound
that in the pink ear are the love that insists.

      Who wants me?  Who says that love
       is a twisted axe,
an exhaustion that divides the body at the waist,
a painful arc where light passes
subtly, never touching anyone?

     The trees in the wood sing as if they were birds.
A huge arm encases the jungle like a creature.
A golden bird by a never ending light
searches lips from which it can flee its jail.

     But the sea doesn’t beat like a heart,
nor a glass or tresses of a distant rock
but does more than assuming the brightness of the sun without return.
Nor are the innumerable fish that populate other skies
more than the slow waters of a remote pupil.

    Then this forest, this speck of blood,
this bird that escapes from a chest,
this breath that exits half-opened lips,
this pair of butterflies that some day may love each other . . .

     This ear that first hears my words,
this flesh that I love with my airborne kisses,
this leather that I narrow as if it were a name,
this rain that falls over my large body,
this freshness of a sky in which some teeth smile,
in which some arms widen, in which a sun threatens,
in which a total music sings invading everything,
in which the carton, the cords, the false fabric,
the painful sackcloth, the world rejected,
takes its leave like a sea that roars without destiny.

   

Vicente Aleixandre

                                  The Root of the Voice




Every day brings me a suit of surprises
And a new fire to my internal fire
My soul has its trade of sorrows
Like a water of remembrances
Or of trees that stir to resemble the sea
I sense something that rises from my dark regions
Which aspires to return me to the sky
Perhaps to give my yearning to the star which wants to support me
There is an unearthed voice that persists in my dreams
Which comes moving over me from my first days
And has crossed the heavy chain of my ancestors
There is a light of flesh that persists in my nights
That ties together certain souls with its rays
There is a devouring hope
A presage of the height touched by human hands
A presage ascending like a thirsty flower
More powerful than the song in the distance heard by the prisoner
There is something that wants to bring to birth my unborn ways
The pieces ignored by my silent being
So much has remained in insatiable labyrinths
Or the mortal mirrors have been taken away without repair
 in the danger of shadows
There is a notion of tears and warm words
That have also come crossing rivers
And epochs like unearthed cities
There is a toil of roots without sleep
And at the same time a formation of distance
For which we will bleed in certain hours
There is a throbbing of things that will mature darkness
And search out the precise word for living amongst ourselves
They search out their distinct odor as every flower must
Our future will be all of this
And the joy in bells disintegrating in their great sounds

Oh transparency of solitude!
Oh liberty of suspended augur!
Oh filter of the intimate conscience that weeps its destiny!
Have you heard enough by now your very voice
Agonized suspended by certain cells

Without the will to shock . . .
Listen now to the voice of the world
Watch the life that vacillates like a tree calling to the sun
When a man is touching his roots
The earth sings with its astral brothers


Vicente Huidobro