Apelación al solitario
Es necesario, a veces, encontrar compañía.
Amigo, no es posible ni nacer ni morir
sino con otro. Es bueno
que la amistad le quite
al trabajo esa cara de castigo
y a la alegría ese aire ilícito de robo.
¿Cómo podrás estar solo a la hora
completa, en que las cosas y tú hablan y hablan,
hasta el amanecer?
Appeal to the solitary one
At times it behooves us to find companionship.
Friend, it’s not possible to be born, or
to die, without the other. It is well
that friendship removes from work
that look of punishment, and from joy
the illicit air of theft.
How can you be alone at the total hour,
in which the things and you talk
and talk, til dawn?
Translation by Julian PalleyEtiquetas: Rosario Castellanos |
DESTINY
We kill what we love. What’s left
Was never alive.
No one else is close. What is forgotten,
What else is absent or less, hurts no one else.
We kill what we love. Enough of drawing a choked breath
Through someone else’s lung!
There is not air enough for both of us. And the earth will not hold
Both our bodies
And our ration of hope is small
And pain cannot be shared.
Man is an animal of solitudes,
A deer that bleeds as it flees
With an arrow in its side.
Ah, but hatred with its insomniac
Glass eyes; its attitude
Of menace and repose.
The deer goes to drink and a tiger
Is reflected in the water.
The deer drinks the water and the image. And becomes
-before he is devoured – (accomplice, fascinated)
his enemy.
We give life only to what we hate.
Translated by Magda Bogin