A POEM
by: José Asunción
Silva (1865-1896)
- PLANNED
one time to perpetrate a song,
- One of the new kind, pulsing, free and strong.
-
- I balanced subjects tragic and grotesque,
- Conjuring all the rhythms unto my desk;
-
- And then the skittish metres gathered round
- Joining in shadowy swing and leap and bound
-
- Metres sonorous, metres potent, grave,
- Some with the shock of arms, some, bird-songs brave;
-
- From East and West, from South as well as North,
- Metres and stanzas bowing hurried forth.
-
- Chafing their golden bridles, loose of rein,
- Approach the Tercets, as if coursers vain.
-
- And opening up amid the gallant ring,
- Purple and gold, arrived the Sonnet king.
-
- And all began to sing -- Among the rabble
- There rose the spirit of a charming gabble.
-
- One pointed strophe wakened my desire
- With the clear tinkling of a little spire;
-
- So above all, I chose it for the bride
- Adding my crystal, silver rhymes beside.
-
- And thus I told a tale, with subtle grace,
- A tragical, fantastic, never base,--
-
- Though sad enough, a story straight and terse--
- Of a fair lady loved and in her hearse;
-
- And to sustain the mournful note I added
- Soft lisps with ex professo kisses padded:
-
- I decked the phrase with gold, and music rare
- Of lute and mandolin was sounded there.
-
- I drew the light of distances profound
- With solemn mists and melancholies bound;
-
- And 'mid the dim obscure, as in a feast
- Of mortals, dancers to the dance released;
-
- Clothed them in words that cloud like heavy veils,
- With midnight masks of satin, velvet trails;--
-
- And in the background interwining, wound
- The mystical and fleshly, as if bound.
-
- Then in my author's pride, I added there
- Heliotrope scent and light of jacynth rare--
-
- And brought the poem to a critic grand,
- Who sent it back -- "I fail to understand."
--Translated by Thomas Walsh
"A Poem" is reprinted
from Hispanic Anthology: Poems Translated from the Spanish
by English and North American Poets. Ed. Thomas Walsh. New
York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1920. |
MORE POEMS BY JOSÉ ASUNCIÓN SILVA |
|