Another Bit of Calm, Comrade
(For Spanish translation click here)

Another bit of calm, comrade;

a very immense, septentrional, complete,

ferocious, by the little calm,

to the minor service of each triumph

and in the fearless servitude of failure.

You have excess rapture, and there’s not

as much madness in the mind as in

your muscular rationality, and there’s not

nothing more erroneously rational than your experience.

But speaking more clearly

and thinking it in gold you are steel

on condition you’re not

a fool and refuse

to be enthusiastic for death so much

and for the life, with only your tomb.

It’s necessary that you know how

to contain your volume, without running, without grieving

your entire molecular reality

and beyond that, the march of your life

and near here, your legends die.

You’re made of steel, as they say,

as long as you don’t tremble and don’t

explode, godfather

of my calculation, emphatic godson

of my luminous salts!

Go right ahead; resolve,

consider your crisis, sum it up, continue,

trim it, diminish it, crumple it up;

the destiny, the intimate energies, the fourteen

verses of bread: how many diplomas

and powers, to the authentic brink of your passion!

How many details in synthesis you’re made of!

How much identical pressure at your feet!

How much rigor, and how much protection!

It’s idiotic

this method of enduring,

that modulated and virulent light,

in which you alone calmly make serious

signs, characteristically fatal.

Let’s see, man;

let me know what’s happening to me, in spite of my gripe,

I enact your strict orders.

28 November 1937