I have earned my bread; –go on write the verse–
and employ my hand in its sweet commerce
like a fugitive entering the dark brush
or a person dragging a heavy load,
who of late counting totals confuses
figures. Bard, would you like to be counseled?
Unload from your pale bloodied back,
the harp take it down, quiet the sobbing
of the furious sea that will beat your throat,
from rich wood cut feather-ink pens for your desk
throw your bursting chords to the blowing wind.
Oh soul! Oh good soul! what bad work is yours!
Bow down, shush, surrender, and lick the hands
of the powerful, exalt,* excuse faults,
keep them well — better that you forgive them,
and timidly and obsequiously
celebrate their vices and vanities:
You will see then, my soul, who deals in rich
golden platters for your poor, barren plate.
Beware, oh my soul! Gold has been cheapened!
but don’t wince for they also fashion gold
into jewels of villains and elites
not weapons, weapons are made of iron!
My wrongs are brusque and the irate city
is eased in the immense countryside more so
with an immenser one! Then the darkened
afternoons call out to me, as though their
expanding shadows were my own homeland.
Oh friendly verse! I die of solitude
I die of love! Not of its vulgar form
but for a love that poisons and dazzles.
It’s not a woman’s fruit that’s beautiful
but her star. Earth should be a source of light
and all living things should regenerate
flames of a star. Oh the displayed women!
Oh cups of flesh! Oh servants of rich men
who they bejewel then empty out,
trembling! I tell you, oh verse, that my teeth
would ache from eating of that kind of flesh!
It is an unspeakable death I die,
the sweet necessity it possesses,
like a newborn child in cautious hands,
my eyes have seen much beauty and sadness.
That unhappy dreams don’t restore themselves
and if they are not happy ones, or are sad
and ill-tempered types who enhance fatigue
I jump toward the sun as though I am drunk
I grasp hard at my face with my two hands
and from my wild eyes tears fall flooding.
And look how beautiful the sun is
my deserted cave and inept virtue
and the forces that throng the hairy flames
leap out of me asking to be of use;
I touch the hollow air against the wall
denuded and cold I support myself
and in my shaken skull thoughts transported
in agony, wedged and shattered pieces
the rabid sea spews on the burning sands!
Only the flowers of my fatherland
have scent! Only my motherland’s ceibas
provide shade! As a journey on a stray
cloud that travels over a strange land
even eye contact offends and the sun
more than mere happy heat rages in flames.
Not of welcome cries does my echo sound
in the air of other lands: and they don’t
flow thickly from their arboreal boughs
the thin spirits of all my loves ones!
Of living flesh and of most profound fruit
a person must live! Ay and even more
an exile feeds off his entrails.
Tyrants! Banish any who have honor
enough to hate you! You’re already dead!
It would be better oh savages! That
on the verge of throwing them from their homes
instead you plunged deep in their honored chests
your most cruel assassin’s toughest of blades!
It’s great to live and awful to live dead.
No more! No more! Happy are those who
have mercy for sad unfortunates who
don’t know how to overcome it. Human
nature destroys its best people: iron
fertilizes soil– The iron hits!
*exalt from the Spanish exalsar