So many gods!
They’re like books—you can’t read everything, you never know anything.
Happy the man who knows but one god, and keeps him a secret.
Every day I have different beliefs—
Sometimes in the same day I have different beliefs—
And I wish I were the child now crossing
The view from my window of the street below.
He’s eating a cheap pastry (he’s poor) without efficient or final cause,
An animal uselessly raised above the other vertebrates,
And through his teeth he sings a ribald show tune . . .
Yes, there are many gods,
But I’d give anything to the one who’d take that child out of my sight.
-Álvaro de Campos
-Álvaro de Campos
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This is powerful! In style and tone, it reminds me a little of Cesar Vallejo. Here's the last stanza of his "Black Stone on Top of a White Stone:
ReplyDelete"Cesar Vallejo is dead. They struck him,
All of them, though he did nothing to them,
They hit him hard with a stick and hard also
With the end of a rope. Witnesses are:
the Thursdays,
The shoulder bones, the loneliness, the rain,
and the roads...