OUR DAILY BREAD.

(for Alejandro Gamboa) Breakfast is drunk down Damp earth of the cemetery gives off the fragrance of the precious blood.

City of winter the mordant crusade of a cart that seems to pull behind it an emotion of fasting that cannot get free!

I wish I could beat on all the doors, and ask for somebody ; and then look at the poor, and, while they wept softly, give bits of fresh bread to them.

And plunder the rich of their vineyards with those two blessed hands which blasted the nails with one blow of light, and flew away from the Cross!

Eyelash of morning, you cannot lift yourselves!

Give us our daily bread, Lord !

Every bone in me belongs to others ; and maybe I robbed them.

I came to take something for myself that maybe was meant for some other man ; and I start thinking that, if I had not been born, another poor man could have drunk this coffee.

I feel like a dirty thief Where will I end?

And in this frigid hour, when the earth has the odor of human dust and is so sad, I wish I could beat on all the doors and beg pardon from someone, and make bits of fresh bread for him here, in the oven of my heart !

Translated by James Wright

PAGANA.

Ir muriendo y cantando. Y bautizar la sombra con sangre babilnica de n.o.ble gladiador.

Y rubricar los cuneiformes de la urea alfombra con la pluma del ruisenor y la tinta azul del dolor.

La vida? Hembra proteica. Contemplarla asustada escapa.r.s.e en sus velos, infiel, falsa Judith; verla desde la herida, y asirla en la mirada, incrustando un capricho de cera en un rub.

Mosto de Babilonia, Holofernes sin tropas, en el rbol, cristiano yo colgue mi nidal ; la vina redentora neg amor a mis copas ; Judith, la vida aleve, sesg su cuerpo hostial.

Tal un festn pagano. Y amarla hasta en la muerte, mientras las venas siembran rojas perlas de mal; y as volverse al polvo, conquistador sin suerte, dejando miles de ojos de sangre en el punal.

PAGAN WOMAN.

To go along dying and singing. And to baptize the darkness with Babylonian blood of a high-minded gladiator.

And to sign the cuneiforms of the gold carpet with the nightingale's feather and the blue ink of pain.

Life? Woman of all shapes. To watch her, terrified, escaping from her veils-false, treacherous Judith ; to see her from the wound, and seize her in a look, imprinting a whim of wax right into the ruby.

Wine dregs of Babylonia, Holofernes without soldiers, I have built my nest in the tree of Christ ; The savior vine would not give my chalices its love ; Judith, the faithless life, twisted her votive body.

What a pagan celebration! And to love her even to death, while the veins sow red pearls of evil ; and so to return to dust, a conqueror with no luck, leaving thousands of eyes of blood on the knife point.

Translated by Robert Bly

LOS DADOS ETERNOS.

Para Manuel Gonzales Prada, esta emocin brava y selecta, una de las que, con ms entusiasmo, me ha aplaudido el gran maestro.

Dios mo, estoy llorando el ser que vivo ; me pesa haber tomdote tu pan ; pero este pobre barro pensativo no es costra fermentada en tu costado: t no tienes Maras que se van!

Dios mo, si t hubieras sido hombre, hoy supieras ser Dios; pero t, que estuviste siempre bien, no sientes nada de tu creacin.

Y el hombre s te sufre: el Dios es el!

Hoy que en mis ojos brujos hay candelas, como en un condenado, Dios mo, prenders todas tus velas, y jugaremos con el viejo dado Tal vez oh jugador! al dar la suerte del universo todo, surgirn las ojeras de la Muerte, como dos ases fnebres de lodo.

Dios mo, y esta noche sorda oscura, ya no podrs jugar, porque la Tierra es un dado rodo y ya redondo a fuerza de rodar a la aventura, que no puede parar si no en un hueco, en el hueco de inmensa sepultura.

THE ETERNAL DICE.

For Manuel Gonzlez Prada, this wild and unique

feeling-one of those emotions which the great

master has admired most in my work.

G.o.d of mine, I am weeping for the life that I live ; I am sorry to have stolen your bread ; but this wretched, thinking piece of clay is not a crust formed in your side: you have no Marys that abandon you!

My G.o.d, if you had been man, today you would know how to be G.o.d, but you always lived so well, that now you feel nothing of your own creation.

And the man who suffers you: he is G.o.d!

Today, when there are candles in my witchlike eyes, as in the eyes of a condemned man, G.o.d of mine, you will light all your lamps, and we will play with the old dice Gambler, when the whole universe, perhaps, is thrown down, the circled eyes of Death will turn up, like two final aces of clay.

My G.o.d, in this m.u.f.fled, dark night, you can't play anymore, because the Earth is already a die nicked and rounded from rolling by chance ; and it can stop only in a hollow place, in the hollow of the enormous grave.

Translated by James Wright

LOS ANILLOS FATIGADOS.

Hay ganas de volver, de amar, de no ausenta.r.s.e y hay ganas de morir, combatido por dos aguas encontradas que jams han de istma.r.s.e.

Hay ganas de un gran beso que amortaje a la Vida, que acaba en el Africa de una agona ardiente, suicida!

Hay ganas de no tener ganas. Senor; a ti yo te senalo con el dedo deicida ; hay ganas de no haber tenido corazn.

La primavera vuelve, vuelve y se ir. Y Dios, curvado en tiempo, se repite, y pasa, pasa a cuestas con la espina dorsal del Universo.

Cuando las sienes tocan su lgubre tambor, cuando me duele el sueno grabado en un punal, hay ganas de queda.r.s.e plantado en este verso!

THE WEARY CIRCLES.

There are desires to return, to love, not to go away, and there are desires to die, fought by two opposite waters that will never become isthmus.

There are desires for a kiss that would shroud life, that withers in Africa of a fiery agony, suicide!

There are desires to not have desires. Lord, at you I point my G.o.d-murdering finger.

There are desires not to have had a heart at all.

Spring returns; it returns and will go away. And G.o.d curved in time repeats himself, and pa.s.ses, pa.s.ses with the backbone of the universe on his shoulder.

When my temples beat their mournful drum, when that sleep etched on a knife hurts me, there are desires not to move an inch from this poem!

Translated by John Knoepfle

DIOS.

Siento a Dios que camina tan en m, con la tarde y con el mar.

Con el nos vamos juntos. Anochece.

Con el anochecemos, Orfandad Pero yo siento a Dios. Y hasta parece que el me dicta no se que buen color.

Como un hospitalario, es bueno y triste ; mustia un dulce desden de enamorado: debe dolerle mucho el corazn.

Oh, Dios mo, recien a ti me llego, hoy que amo tanto en esta tarde; hoy que en la falsa balanza de unos senos, mido y lloro una frgil Creacin.

Y t, cul llorars t, enamorado de tanto enorme seno girador Yo te consagro Dios, porque amas tanto; porque jams sonres: porque siempre debe dolerte mucho el corazn.