Contra el verso retórico y ornado
Contra el verso retórico y ornado
El verso natural. Acá un torrente:
Aquí una piedra seca. Allá un dorado
Pájaro, que en las ramas verdes brilla,
Como una marañuela entre esmeraldas -
Acá la huella fétida y viscosa
De un gusano: los ojos, dos burbujas
De fango, pardo el vientre, craso, inmundo.
Por sobre el árbol, más arriba, sola
En el cielo de acero una segura
Estrella; y a los pies el horno,
El horno a cuyo ardor la tierra cuece -
Llamas, llamas que luchan, con abiertos
Huecos como ojos, lenguas como brazos,
Savia como de hombre, punta aguda
Cual de espada: ¡la espada de la vida
Que incendio a incendio gana al fin, la tierra!
Trepa: viene de adentro: ruge: aborta.
Empieza el hombre en fuego y para en ala.
Y a su paso triunfal, los maculados,
Los viles, los cobardes, los vencidos,
Como serpientes, como gozques, como
Cocodrilos de doble dentadura,
De acá, de allá, del árbol que le ampara,
Del suelo que le tiene, del arroyo
Donde apaga la sed, del yunque mismo
Donde se forja el pan, le ladran y echan
El diente al pie, al rostro el polvo y lodo,
Cuanto cegarle puede en su camino.
El, de un golpe de ala, barre el mundo
Y sube por la atmósfera encendida
Muerto como hombre y como sol sereno.
Así ha de ser la noble poesía:
Así como la vida: estrella y gozque;
La cueva dentellada por el fuego,
El pino en cuyas ramas olorosas
A la luz de la luna canta un nido
Canta un nido a la lumbre de la luna.
Not rhetoric or ornament
Not rhetoric or ornament
But a natural verse. Here a torrent
Here a dry stone. There a gilded bird
Shining in green branches,
Like a nasturtium among emeralds.
Here the fetid, viscous trace
Of a slug: its eyes mud-blisters, its belly
drab, greasy, foul.
In the treetop, higher still, alone
In the steel sky a constant
Star; and here, below, the oven
The oven that cooks the earth.
Flames, struggling flames, with
eye-like sockets, arm-like tongues,
A man's fury, sword-sharp: the sword of life
That blaze upon blaze conquers the earth at last!
It climbs, roaring from within, destroying:
Man begins in flame and finishes in flight.
At his triumphal passage the dirty
The vile, the cowardly, the defeated,
Like snakes, like lap dogs, like
Crocodiles with their double rows of teeth,
From here, from there, from the tree that shelters him
From the soil that holds him, from the ditch
Where he slakes his thirst, from the very anvil
Where bread is shaped, they howl and toss him,
Bite at his foot, his face covered with dust and mud;
Thus can a man be blinded on his path.
With one beat of his wing he sweeps the world aside
And rises through the burnt atmosphere,
Dead, like a man and like the serene sun.
Thus must noble poetry be:
Thus, as life is: star and lap dog;
The cave with teeth of flame,
The pine in whose fragrant branches
A nest sings by the moon's light,
A nest sings to the splendor of moonlight.
Translated by Mark Weiss
AGAINST RHETORICAL AND ORNATE VERSE
ResponderEliminarAgainst rhetorical and ornate verse,
There is the verse natural. Here a storm:
There a dry stone. Here a golden bird
On verdant branches shining as a nasturtium
Amongst emeralds. There the fetid, sticky track
Of a worm: its eyes, two bubbles of mire,
Its brownish belly, engorged and filthy.
Above the free, far higher and alone,
In the steel-blue sky there is a fixed star,
And beneath it a red furnace is burning,
Furnace whose arduous fires boil the earth.
Flames, flames that fight, with gaping holes for eyes,
And tongues for arms, and manly blood for sap,
Sharp-pointed like a sword: the sword of life
That sets the blaze that finally wins over,
Fire by fire, the expanse of earth!
The fire climbs, feeds from within, aborts.
Man starts in fire and ends in a wing,
And across his triumphant stride, the impure,
The evil, the cowardly and the vanquished,
As snakes, cur dogs and double-toothed crocodiles,
From here and there, from everywhere amassing,
From under the soil sustaining him,
From inside the brook that sates his thirst,
From atop the anvil where his bread is struck,
They bark at him, together sink their teeth
Into his feet, throw dust, throw mud in his face,
And all else that will blind him on his way:
So ought noble poetry to be: the same
As life: both star and cur dog: here
The cave bitten by the fire; there the fragrant pine
On whose branches a nest sings by moonlight.