The Soul That Suffered from Being Its Body
(For Spanish translation click here)

You suffer from an endocrine gland, that’s obvious,

or, perhaps,

you suffer from me, from my tacit tight-lipped sagacity.

You suffer from the translucent anthropoid there, near,

where the tenebrous darkness lies.

You walk around the sun, clutching onto your soul,

spraying out your corporeal juanes

adjusting out your collar; that’s obvious.

You know what hurts you,

what leaps onto your haunch,

what lowers through you with a rope to the ground.

You, poor man, live; don’t deny it,

if you die from your age, ah! And from your epoch.

And even if you cry, you drink,

and even if you bleed, you nourish your hybrid tooth,

your sad candle and your parts.

You suffer, you endure, and again suffer horribly,

unlucky monkey,

little Darwinian offspring,

constable who spies on me, atrocious microbe.

And you know this so well,

you ignore it, bursting into tears.

You, then, have been born; also

that can be seen from afar, and unhappy,

so shut up and endure the road you’re destined to be on

and questioning your navel: Where? How?

My friend, you’re completely up

to your hair, in the year ’38,

Nicholas or Santiago, such or which,

whether you are yourself with your miscarriage or with me

or caught in your enormous liberty,

dragged along by your autonomous Hercules . . .

but if you calculate on your fingers up to two,

it’s worse; don’t deny it, little brother.

No? Yes? Nevertheless no?

Poor monkey! . . . Gimme your paw! . . . No. The hand, I say.

Cheers! And suffer!

8 November 1937