(no subject)

[silverflurry.livejournal.com]

XIX: To an Athlete Dying Young


The time you won your town the race
We chaired you through the market-place;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high.

To-day, the road all runners come,
Shoulder-high we bring you home,
And set you at your threshold down,
Townsman of a stiller town.

Smart lad, to slip betimes away
From fields where glory does not stay
And early though the laurel grows
It withers quicker than the rose.

Eyes the shady night has shut
Cannot see the record cut,
And silence sounds no worse than cheers
After earth has stopped the ears:

Now you will not swell the rout
Of lads that wore their honours out,
Runners whom renown outran
And the name died before the man.

So set, before its echoes fade,
The fleet foot on the sill of shade,
And hold to the low lintel up
The still-defended challenge-cup.

And round that early-laurelled head
Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,
And find unwithered on its curls
The garland briefer than a girl's.
------------------------------------------------------------
Housman, A.E. 1886. From A Shropshire Lad.

translations.

[fototropical.livejournal.com]

NEW HEART

Like a snake, my heart
has shed its skin.
I hold it here in my hand
full of honey and wounds.

The thoughts that nested
in your folds, where are they now?
Where the roses that perfumed
both Jesus Christ and Satan?

Poor wrapper that dampened
my fantastical star,
parchment gray and mournful
of what I loved once but love no more!

I see fetal sciences in you,
mummified poems, and bones
of my romantic secrets
and old innocence.

Shall I hang you on the wall
of my emotional museum,
beside my dark, chill,
sleeping irises of evil?

Or shall I spread you over the pines
---suffering book of my love---
so you can learn about the song
the nightingale offers the dawn?

Federico García Lorca
---------------
Corazón nuevo

Mi corazón, como una sierpe,
se ha desprendido de su piel,
y aquí la miro entre mis dedos,
llena de heridas y de miel.

Los pensamientos que anidaron
en tus arrugas ?dónde están?
¿Dónde las rosas que amoraron
a Jesucristo y Satán?

!Pobre envoltura que ha oprimido
a mi fantástico lucero!
Gris pergamino dolorido
de lo que quise y ya no quiero.

Yo veo en ti fetos de ciencias,
momias de versos y esqueletos
de mis antiguas inocencias
y mis románticos secretos.

¿Te colgare sobre los muros
de mi museo sentimental,
junto a los gelidos y oscuros
lirios durmientres de mi mal?

¿O te pondre sobre los pinos
---libro doliente de mi amor---
para que sepas de los trinos
que da a la aurora el ruiseñor?