Fatality

Ruben Dario

Silence of the night , a sad, nocturnal

silence--Why does my soul tremble so?

I hear the humming of my blood,

and a soft storm passes through my brain.

Insomnia! Not to be able to sleep, and yet

to dream. I am the autospecimen

of spiritual dissection, the auto-Hamlet!

To dilute my sadness

in the wine of the night

in the marvelous crystal of the dark--

And I ask myself: When will the dawn come?

Someone has closed a door--

Someone has walked past--

The clock has rung three--If only it were She!-- 

Fatality

The tree is happy because it is scarcely sentient; 

the hard rock is happier still, it feels nothing:

there is no pain as great as being alive,

no burden heavier than that of conscious life.

To be, and to know nothing, and to lack a way,

and the dread of having been, and future terrors...

And the sure terror of being dead tomorrow,

and to suffer all through life and through the darkness,

and through what we do not know and hardly suspect...

And the flesh that temps us with bunches of cool grapes,

and the tomb that awaits us with its funeral sprays,

and not to know where we go,

nor whence we came! ... 

A Roosevelt  

Es con voz de la Biblia, o verso de Walt Whitman, 

que habría que llegar hasta ti, Cazador! 

Primitivo y moderno, sencillo y complicado, 

con un algo de Washington y cuatro de Nemrod. 

Eres los Estados Unidos, 

eres el futuro invasor 

de la América ingenua que tiene sangre indígena, 

que aún reza a Jesucristo y aún habla en español. 

Eres soberbio y fuerte ejemplar de tu raza; 

eres culto, eres hábil; te opones a Tolstoy. 

Y domando caballos, o asesinando tigres, 

eres un Alejandro-Nabucodonosor. 

(Eres un profesor de energía, 

como dicen los locos de hoy.) 

Crees que la vida es incendio, 

que el progreso es erupción; 

en donde pones la bala 

el porvenir pones. 

No. 

Los Estados Unidos son potentes y grandes. 

Cuando ellos se estremecen hay un hondo temblor 

que pasa por las vértebras enormes de los Andes. 

Si clamáis, se oye como el rugir del león. 

Ya Hugo a Grant le dijo: «Las estrellas son vuestras». 

(Apenas brilla, alzándose, el argentino sol 

y la estrella chilena se levanta...) Sois ricos. 

Juntáis al culto de Hércules el culto de Mammón; 

y alumbrando el camino de la fácil conquista, 

la Libertad levanta su antorcha en Nueva York. 

Mas la América nuestra, que tenía poetas 

desde los viejos tiempos de Netzahualcoyotl, 

que ha guardado las huellas de los pies del gran Baco, 

que el alfabeto pánico en un tiempo aprendió; 

que consultó los astros, que conoció la Atlántida, 

cuyo nombre nos llega resonando en Platón, 

que desde los remotos momentos de su vida 

vive de luz, de fuego, de perfume, de amor, 

la América del gran Moctezuma, del Inca, 

la América fragante de Cristóbal Colón, 

la América católica, la América española, 

la América en que dijo el noble Guatemoc: 

«Yo no estoy en un lecho de rosas»; esa América 

que tiembla de huracanes y que vive de Amor, 

hombres de ojos sajones y alma bárbara, vive. 

Y sueña. Y ama, y vibra; y es la hija del Sol. 

Tened cuidado. ¡Vive la América española! 

Hay mil cachorros sueltos del León Español. 

Se necesitaría, Roosevelt, ser Dios mismo, 

el Riflero terrible y el fuerte Cazador, 

para poder tenernos en vuestras férreas garras. 

Y, pues contáis con todo, falta una cosa: ¡Dios!

To Roosevelt

The voice that would reach you, Hunter, must speak

in Biblical tones, or in the poetry of Walt Whitman.

You are primitive and modern, simple and complex;

you are one part George Washington and one part Nimrod.

You are the United States,

future invader of our naive America

with its Indian blood, an America

that still prays to Christ and still speaks Spanish.

You are strong, proud model of your race;

you are cultured and able; you oppose Tolstoy.

You are an Alexander-Nebuchadnezzar,

breaking horses and murdering tigers.

(You are a Professor of Energy,

as current lunatics say).

You think that life is a fire,

that progress is an irruption,

that the future is wherever

your bullet strikes.

No.

The United States is grand and powerful.

Whenever it trembles, a profound shudder

runs down the enormous backbone of the Andes.

If it shouts, the sound is like the roar of a lion.

And Hugo said to Grant: 'The stars are yours.'

(The dawning sun of the Argentine barely shines;

the star of Chile is rising..) A wealthy country,

joining the cult of Mammon to the cult of Hercules;

while Liberty, lighting the path

to easy conquest, raises her torch in New York.

But our own America, which has had poets

since the ancient times of Nezahualcóyolt;

which preserved the footprint of great Bacchus,

and learned the Panic alphabet once,

and consulted the stars; which also knew Atlantic

(whose name comes ringing down to us in Plato)

and has lived, since the earliest moments of its life,

in light, in fire, in fragrance, and in love--

the America of Moctezuma and Atahualpa,

the aromatic America of Columbus,

Catholic America, Spanish America,

the America where noble Cuauthémoc said:

'I am not in a bed of roses'--our America,

trembling with hurricanes, trembling with Love:

O men with Saxon eyes and barbarous souls,

our America lives. And dreams. And loves.

And it is the daughter of the Sun. Be careful.

Long live Spanish America!

A thousand cubs of the Spanish lion are roaming free.

Roosevelt, you must become, by God's own will,

the deadly Rifleman and the dreadful Hunter

before you can clutch us in your iron claws.

And though you have everything, you are lacking one thing:

God!