Noche, nieve y arena hacen la forma de mi delgada patria, todo el silencio est en su larga lnea, toda la espuma sale de su barba marina, todo el carbn la llena de misteriosos besos.
Como una brasa el oro arde en sus dedos y la plata ilumina como una luna verde su endurecida forma de tetrico planeta.
El espanol sentado junto a la rosa un da, junto al aceite, junto al vino, junto al antiguo cielo no imagin este punto de colerica piedra nacer bajo el estiercol del guila marina.
DISCOVERERS OF CHILE.
Almagro brought his wrinkled lightning down from the north, and day and night he bent over this country between gunshots and twilight, as if over a letter.
Shadow of thorn, shadow of thistle and of wax, the Spaniard, alone with his dried-up body, watching the shadowy tactics of the soil.
My slim nation has a body made up of night, snow, and sand, the silence of the world is in its long coast, the foam of the world rises from its seaboard, the coal of the world fills it with mysterious kisses.
Gold burns in its finger like a live coal and silver lights up like a green moon its petrified shadow that"s like a gloomy planet.
The Spaniard, sitting one day near a rose, near oil, near wine, near the primitive sky, could not really grasp how this spot of furious stone was born beneath the droppings of the ocean eagle.
Translated by Robert Bly PART IV, called "The Liberators" is the longest section in the book, with over fifty poems. It concentrates on the liberations in the various South American countries from the European nations that had colonized them. We have chosen the twenty-eighth poem, on the liberator of Haiti, Toussaint L"Ouverture. There are fine poems also on O"Higgins, Lautaro, San Martin, Bolivar, Jose Marti, and others.
TOESSAINT L"OUVERTURE
Hait de su dulzura enmaranada, extrae petalos pateticos, rect.i.tud de jardines, edificios de la grandeza, arrulla el mar como un abuelo oscuro su antigua dignidad de piel y es.p.a.cio.
Toussaint L"Ouverture anuda la vegetal soberana, la majestad encadenada, la sorda voz de los tambores, y ataca, cierra el paso, sube, ordena, expulsa, desafa como un monarca natural, hasta que en la red tenebrosa cae y lo llevan por los mares arrastrado y atropellado como el regreso de su raza, tirado a la muerte secreta de las sentinas y los stanos.
Pero en la Isla arden las penas, hablan las ramas escondidas, se trasmiten las esperanzas, surgen los muros del baluarte.
La libertad es bosque tuyo, oscuro hermano, preserva tu memoria de sufrimientos y que los heroes pasados custodien tu mgica espuma.
Out of its own tangled sweetness Haiti raises mournful petals, and elaborate gardens, magnificent structures, and rocks the sea as a dark grandfather rocks his ancient dignity of skin and s.p.a.ce.
Toussaint L"Ouverture knits together the vegetable kingdom, the majesty chained, the monotonous voice of the drums and attacks, cuts off retreats, rises, orders, expels, defies like a natural monarch, until he falls into the shadowy net and they carry him over the seas, dragged along and trampled down like the return of his race, thrown into the secret death of the ship-holds and the cellars.
But on the island the boulders burn, the hidden branches speak, hopes are pa.s.sed on, the walls of the fortress rise.
Liberty is your own forest, dark brother, don"t lose the memory of your sufferings, may the ancestral heroes have your magic sea-foam in their keeping.
Translated by James Wright
LA UNITED FRUIT CO.
Cuando son la trompeta, estuvo todo preparado en la tierra, y Jehov reparti el mundo a Coca-Cola Inc., Anaconda, Ford Motors, y otras entidades: la Compana Frutera Inc.
se reserv lo ms jugoso, la costa central de mi tierra, la dulce cintura de America.
Bautiz de nuevo sus tierras como "Repblicas Bananas,"
y sobre los muertos dormidos, sobre los heroes inquietos que conquistaron la grandeza, la libertad y las banderas, estableci la pera bufa: enajen los albedros regal coronas de Cesar, desenvain la envidia, atrajo la dictadura de las moscas, moscas Trujillos, moscas Tachos, moscas Carias, moscas Martnez, moscas Ubico, moscas hmedas de sangre humilde y mermelada, moscas borrachas que zumban sobre las tumbas populares, moscas de circo, sabias moscas entendidas en tirana.
Entre las moscas sanguinarias la Frutera desembarca, arrasando el cafe y las frutas, en sus barcos que deslizaron como bandejas el tesoro de nuestras tierras sumergidas.
Mientras tanto, por los abismos azucarados de los puertos, caan indios sepultados en el vapor de la manana: un cuerpo rueda, una cosa sin nombre, un nmero cado, un racimo de fruta muerta derramada en el pudridero.
THE UNITED FRUIT CO.
When the trumpet sounded, it was all prepared on the earth, and Jehovah parceled out the earth to Coca-Cola, Inc., Anaconda, Ford Motors, and other ent.i.ties: The Fruit Company, Inc.
reserved for itself the most succulent, the central coast of my own land, the delicate waist of America.
It rechristened its territories as the "Banana Republics"
and over the sleeping dead, over the restless heroes who brought about the greatness, the liberty and the flags, it established the comic opera: abolished the independencies, presented crowns of Caesar, unsheathed envy, attracted the dictatorship of the flies, Trujillo flies, Tacho flies, Carias flies, Martinez flies, Ubico flies, damp flies of modest blood and marmalade, drunken flies who zoom over the ordinary graves, circus flies, wise flies well trained in tyranny.
PART v, "The Betrayed Sand," concentrates on the men who allowed South American nations to fall back to colonialism, this time to the financial colonialism of the United States, and on the men who support United States" interests today. He mentions the pressure from U.S. companies to keep wages low. He describes especially events in the year 1946, while he was a Senator in Chile. We have chosen one of the poems in the center of the section, on the United Fruit Company.
Among the bloodthirsty flies the Fruit Company lands its ships, taking off the coffee and the fruit; the treasure of our submerged territories flows as though on plates into the ships.
Meanwhile Indians are falling into the sugared chasms of the harbors, wrapped for burial in the mist of the dawn: a body rolls, a thing that has no name, a fallen cipher, a cl.u.s.ter of dead fruit thrown down on the dump.
Translated by Robert Bly
HAMBRE EN EL SUR.
Veo el sollozo en el carbn de Lota y la arrugada sombra del chileno humillado picar la amarga veta de la entrana, morir, vivir, nacer en la dura ceniza agachados, cados como si el mundo entrara as y saliera as entre polvo negro, entre llamas, y slo sucediera la tos en el invierno, el paso de un caballo en el agua negra, donde ha cado una hoja de eucaliptus como un cuchillo muerto.
PART VI, called "America, I Do Not Call Your Name Without Hope," is made of eighteen curious and oblique poems. The long flowing narratives we have become used to in Canto General disappear, and we find instead sudden instants the poem holds back in order to look deep into them. The language is resonant and fragrant. The poems describe an instant on horseback in winter, an instant aware of hunger in the coal mines, an instant aware of the mad frustration of Central America, a meeting with some seamen in Valparaiso, an instant in Patagonia with the seals. We have translated four of the poems, including his famous poem on adolescence, the t.i.tle poem, a poem on hunger, and "Dictators," with its powerful, oblique language describing the mood of a Latin American country under a dictator.
HUNGER IN THE SOUTH.
I see the sobbing in the coal at Lota and the wrinkled shadow of the beaten-down Chilean pick away at the bitter vein in the core, die, live, be born in the petrified cinder bent over, fallen as if the world could arrive like that or leave like that among black dust, among flames, and all that would come out of it would be the cough in winter, the step of a horse in the black water, where a eucalyptus leaf has fallen like a dead knife.
Translated by Robert Bly
JUVENTUD.
Un perfume como una cida espada de ciruelas en un camino, los besos del azcar en los dientes, las gotas vitales resbalando en los dedos, la dulce pulpa ertica, las eras, los pajares, los incitantes sitios secretos de las casas anchas, los colchones dormidos en el pasado, el agrio valle verde mirado desde arriba, desde el vidrio escondido: toda la adolescencia mojndose y ardiendo como una lmpara derribada en la lluvia.
YOUTH.
An odor like an acid sword made of plum branches along the road, the kisses like sugar in the teeth, the drops of life slipping on the fingertips, the sweet s.e.xual fruit, the yards, the haystacks, the inviting rooms hidden in the deep houses, the mattresses sleeping in the past, the savage green valley seen from above, from the hidden window: adolescence all sputtering and burning like a lamp turned over in the rain.
Translated by Robert Bly
LOS DICTADORES.
Ha quedado un olor entre los canaverales: una mezcla de sangre y cuerpo, un penetrante petalo nauseabundo.
Entre los cocoteros las tumbas estn llenas de huesos demolidos, de estertores callados.
El delicado strapa conversa con copas, cuellos y cordones de oro.
El pequeno palacio brilla como un reloj y las rpidas risas enguantadas atraviesan a veces los pasillos y se renen a las voces muertas y a las bocas azules frescamente enterradas.
El llanto est escondido como una planta cuya semilla cae sin cesar sobre el suelo y hace crecer sin luz sus grandes hojas ciegas.
El odio se ha formado escama a escama, golpe a golpe, en el agua terrible del pantano, con un hocico lleno de legamo y silencio.
THE DICTATORS.
An odor has remained among the sugarcane: a mixture of blood and body, a penetrating petal that brings nausea.
Between the coconut palms the graves are full of ruined bones, of speechless death-rattles.
The delicate dictator is talking with top hats, gold braid, and collars.
The tiny palace gleams like a watch and the rapid laughs with gloves on cross the corridors at times and join the dead voices and the blue mouths freshly buried.
The weeping cannot be seen, like a plant whose seeds fall endlessly on the earth, whose large blind leaves grow even without light.