pleasures of melancholy by Jose M Heredia
my translation of a poem written in Spanish by Jose M Heredia, 2nd most important poet from Cuba, because of his patriotic poetry he was forced into exile by Spain during the 1800’s, he wrote this poem before his death in Mexico city from tuberculosis. Awarded bronze star in the Lovely contest at writerscafe.org (2008).
pleasures of melancholy by Jose M Heredia belongs to the following groups:
All Things Poetic, Artistic, Philosophical, History, Iberia , Latin-Caribbean Art, Love & Romance , Masterpieces: Literary Workshop, The Word Tree and WMGI
Is not given to men of their weak foreheads
to draw away sorrows and pains,
nor for fields of myrths and flowers
direct the torrent of life.
Of the passions the flaming breathe
alienates perhaps, and in brief hours,
lost in fervid illusions,
thinks to believe itself happy.
Who has not suffer the fever of love,
nor what cold soul
has not tasted the poisoned sweetness
that in the fatal kiss Cupid pours?
I adore beauty: which sun of life
showed to my eyes, and drank turned on
the calyx of love up to the x,
my impetuous soul, turbulent and fiery,
in all its pleasures and desires
to the extreme flew; warm passions
never in it fit… But, Alas! right away
follow enjoyments and my delirium
the satiety, the devouring boredom,
as it follows of autumn the shining sun
that of the pale and somber winter.
Such is the luck of the grieved mortal:
to agitate and suffer, after he feels
the rigor of his broken chest
for his excessive ardor, that finally drains
of emotion the precious fountain.
What would he do sad? The flowers of life
to the burning blowing out of the passions
will feel wilted. Wherever it looks
the world will be to his eyes a desert,
and the mysterious abyss of the grave
will be of his hope its only port.
That is how the navigator in tempestuous night
only distinguishes among its dense veil
the furious sea and the disturbed sky.
Then you, genteel Melancholy,
will be sweet balm that softens
its arid heart and consoles it
more than the placid crying of the night
to the drained flower. I your pleasures
will sing, and your favor implore.
Come: soft tones to my voice inspire;
turned on by your breath, and of my lyre
turned with languidness the strings of gold.
Who, in adverse or prosperous fortune,
does not abandon to the vague thought,
when the Earth sighs of the wind
and of Cuba at sea the moon sleeps?
Who has not felt then its heart dilated,
and with pleasure taking
to a thousand delicious ruminations
of venture and love? With such pleasure
in the fields bathed by the moon
follow our pensive gazes
the shadow of the fugitive clouds
in a ocean of pure and serene Light!
What enchantment there is in the
calm of the night,
from the deep sea the distant fury,
that flatters the heart? Melancholy,
you breathe there: your kind face,
watches among transparent vapors,
smiles with tenderness to whom in your chest
looks for peace, and to which sorrows I fill
takes refuge in you, with compassionate hand
of the face wipes sweat and crying;
but the furious dissipation, meanwhile,
in its dances and games and feasts
to make others drink of the sad cup of boredom,
to those seduced by its flattery
look for among its fervid caresses
pleasure and happiness. Wilted, tired,
cursed the sun, and to their anxious sleep
the tormented forehead reclining,
luck truncating the beautiful day.
Deceitful anxiety, fatal, how impious
you dried up my heart! Oh time
of blindness and furor…! Insane,
of torment with end I look for happiness,
in its eternal perturbation…
to my eyes the sun shines more purely
from this, more sane, no nourishment
of my blood the heated ardor
dreaming joys and future pleasure,
of the pleasant illusion I lost the enchantment,
but I found peace to be the sure god.
II
Sweet solitude, in which its throne
seats the happy Melancholy.
From my venturous infancy
was my love? Isolated, pensive,
I liked to wander at the river
from the wide sea. If the angry winds
its chest swelled in fiery torment,
a thousand vague thoughts, tumultuous
also agitated me: but I had
unexplained pleasure, indefinite
confusion. When calmness
ruled around, and the immense mirror
of the sun in the west reflected
the noble image in a column of gold,
I in happy ecstasy contemplated it,
and my hidden thoughts were
sweet, like the silence of the fields
of the moon under its light. And the pedantic,
whims of infancy that wanted
to subjugate my reasoning to its deliriums,
fiery threatening says:
“This lazy and wandering child
will always be silly.” And I trembled,
but I did not cursed them,
instead I flew from them,
and in my passive solitude I cried.
III
Oh! If God, of my evil will take pity,
the wings of a spirit would give me!
By the fields of space will flee
from this world so beautiful and so unhappy!
Oh! If in it at least they will offer
me a sensible woman, that could
fix my hearts with emotions
less alive perhaps, less violent
than those turned on by Love, but sweeter
and more lasting! In its ingenious forehead
the candor and peace smiled at me:
this excess of Life tired me
will alleviate her love. Her pitiful voice,
balm of pouring consolation,
and its tremulous accent dissipated
the darkness of my sadden soul.
Incarnation of my ideal wife,
how much I will adore you…! Not for more time
make me crave you and sighs in vain;
look that flies my shining greenness
Alas! Come, and listen to my pitiful pleading…!
IV
Who does not enjoy melancholic pleasure?
to see time with golden plant
days, years and the grave centuries
precipitate in the dark abyss
of what it was? The brilliant eras
of history I ran through… What furors!
Fatal frame of crimes and errors!
Wherever in blood dyes the hands:
the men fascinated or furious
are already vile toys of fascists?
already miserable serfs of tyrants.
From people to people to dominion yield;
and from the bloody orb, desolate,
disappear, like in an angry sea
waves follow waves.
From Babylon, Memphis and Palmyra
among the mute skeletons, the traveler
horrifies of looking at its fiery depravity,
and with deep pity sighs.
American fields! On these fields
I will pour tears. What people ignores
your name and unhappiness? Surrounded
by a gloomy cloud a hemisphere,
hides from the other; more daring
forced Columbus the stormy empire
of the ferocious Ocean. The fragile ship
by the lifelessness of an unknown sea
in silence flew, the vile mob,
pale, inert, with deep terror,
to the loved fatherland
turning already the resinous bow,
when to its eyes glowing dawn
the beaches of the New World revealed.
Ferocious Men! The severe history
in bloody pages eternalizes
the memory of their atrocities.
To the terrible effort of his sword
felled the Temple of the Sun, and the tall throne
of Acampich… The unhappy shadows
of the Aztec kings forgotten
to evocate I dared over their graves,
and from the dust to my voice they raised
and their immense pain they revealed to me.
Where was the candorous and pure race
that inhabited the Antilles?… Hurt
by the winner with the furibund iron:
trembles, moans, dies,
and, like fog to the sun, disappears.
Thirsty for infinite knowledge,
of the Tiber, of the Jordan and the Euphrates
the waters I will drink, and in its shores,
seated in solitary rubbles
of broken poor nations,
I will meditate: great lessons,
great examples I will get out of my mind
of its desolation: when its sublime
the voice of the sepulchers and ruins!
There your inspiration pure and solemn,
Oh Muse of Knowledge! My voice animates.
And you also, genial Melancholy,
will follow me wherever sighting,
or in my bed your forehead reclining
to my rest it will be company.
V
How much placid and tender the memory
of those that we loved, when death
from our love grabbed them! The grave
locks the immobile ashes;
the light spirit wanders
in the serene air of the night
around those that love, and answer
to its sweet remembrances and sighs,
in my exterior communion. Believe me,
do not doubt it: because of this they are very sweet
the solitary tears poured
on the father’s grave, the husband’s
or the lover’s, and the wounded chest
loves its crying and its pitiful pain.
Oh you, that you were for me in the land
of God august image! How many hours,
from the moment that closed your life,
passed by me, filled with bitterness
and of intense pain! Loved shadow
of the best of fathers, in heaven
receive from my hurt chest
the eternal gratitude. My docile mind
picked up with deep attention,
from your eloquent mouth in the words,
knowledge, truth: even of your forehead
in the serene majesty read
great lessons of virtue. Your steps,
your looks, your voice, your thoughts
were peace and virtue. With how much gentleness
from my impatient chest restraining
the burning, the ferociousness…! Heaven
against the blind furor of the wicked
serving you as asylum, left me
among a thousand clouds… Alas! at least
I will go and die at your sepulcher, and next
to your sacred dust
I will recline my tormented dust,
that to the echo of three fatal syllables
even there will tremble. But your memory
will be, as long as I breathe, my consolation,
and pleasant and sweet the solitary crying
that consecrates her, but some joy
of the miserable soil:
Do not abandon me, father, from Heaven!
VI
Fatherland…! Name so sadly delicious
the pilgrim poor, that wanders
far from the soil that saw it born!
Alas! Never of your trees the shadow
will refresh your hurting forehead?
When in the night the musical noise
of the palm trees and the sounding bananas
will come happy to give to my ear?
How many gentleness’s, alas! are unknown
until it will get lost! No: never the fields
of Cuba appeared to my eyes
of more beauty and ornate kindness,
than today to my sad fantasy.
Sad remembrances of wickedness and crying!
When my soul hoped for peace,
redoubled Fortune its rigors,
and not persecution and furors
passed thundering the cloudy day.
Since then my hesitating eyes
look to Cuba, and to its name only
of tears they fill. At night,
among the rough roar of the angry wind,
sounds the unhappy hymn of the exiled
or the immobile Ocean goes to sleep
from June to July in the burning calms,
anxious I look for in the distant breeze
the voice of its brooks and its palm trees.
Oh! do not condemn me to here moan,
like in a garden of burnt hail
wilts between glass locked
the barren plant of different climate.
My happy enthusiasm lies turned off:
in my hands, oh lyre! was broken,
when it blows from the north the sad wind,
could some heart not be frozen?
Where are the breezes of the fresh night?
of the magic inspiring moon
the warm reflection, and from the orange tree
and the mango emanates very gentle aroma?
Where are the small clouds, that floating
on the serene blue of the sphere,
islands of peace and glory look like?
The night has here a dark veil:
the world falls asleep immobile, mute,
and the air plunges, and below the acute sharpness
of the refined veil the sky shines.
Shining is to the eyes, but cold,
cold like death. I admire it
but I cannot kill it, because it kills me,
and by the sun of the tropic sighs.
Fly; wind of the north, and to the fields
of my beloved country
carry my crying, to my tender mother,
Murmurs my pain…
VII
To you I take refuge with, loyal Melancholy.
Alleviate my sorrow; to you I consecrate
the rest of my miserable life.
You are always beautiful, interesting, kind;
already renovates our past days,
already sadly smiling placid
in the pale forehead of a beautiful woman,
when the ferocious sickness annuls
its spring era. Benign goddess,
your balm of peace and consolation
pours to my abated soul,
until I go to rest to heaven
from this delirium that is call Life.
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