Some mundane poems by Yeats
W.B. Yeats. Foto: Alvin Langdon Coburn
EL VINO ENTRA EN LA BOCA...
El vino entra en la boca
Y el amor entra en los ojos;
Esto
es todo lo que en verdad conocemos
Antes de envejecer y morir.
Así llevo el vaso a mi boca,
Y
te miro, y suspiro.
WINE COMES IN AT THE MOUTH
Wine comes in at the mouth
And love comes in at the eye;
That’s all we shall know for truth
Before we grow old and die.
I lift the glass to my mouth,
I look at you, and I sigh.
LA DISYUNTIVA
El intelecto humano está en la disyuntiva:
o la vida perfecta, o la perfecta obra.
Si elige la segunda a rehusar se obliga
una mansión divina mientras rabia en la sombra.
¿Y qué sucede cuando ese cuento termina?
Se tenga suerte o no, deja huella el afán:
vieja perplejidad, la cartera vacía,
o vanidad del día, el nocturno pesar.
THE CHOICE
The intellect of man is forced to choose
perfection of the life, or of the work,
And if it take the second must refuse
A heavenly mansion, raging in the dark.
When all that story's finished, what's the news?
In luck or out the toil has left its mark:
That old perplexity an empty purse,
Or the day's vanity, the night's remorse.
DESEA ÉL LAS TELAS DEL CIELO
Si tuviese yo las telas del cielo,
bordadas con luz dorada y plateada,
las telas azules y las tenues y las oscuras
de la noche y la luz y la media luz,
extendería las telas bajo tus pies:
Pero soy pobre y solo tengo
la tela de mis sueños, ya ves;
pisa suavemente, porque pisas mis sueños.
HE WISHES FOR THE CLOTHS OF HEAVEN
Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
LA DESERCIÓN DE LOS ANIMALES DEL CIRCO
THE CIRCUS ANIMALS' DESERTION
I
I sought a theme and sought for it in vain,
I sought it daily for six weeks or so.
Maybe at last, being but a broken man,
I must be satisfied with my heart, although
Winter and summer till old age began
My circus animals were all on show,
Those stilted boys, that burnished chariot,
Lion and woman and the Lord knows what.
II
What can I but enumerate old themes?
First that sea-rider Oisin led by the nose
Through three enchanted islands, allegorical dreams,
Vain gaiety, vain battle, vain repose,
Themes of the embittered heart, or so it seems,
That might adorn old songs or courtly shows;
But what cared I that set him on to ride,
I, starved for the bosom of his faery bride?
And then a counter-truth filled out its play,
'The Countess Cathleen' was the name I gave it;
She, pity-crazed, had given her soul away,
But masterful Heaven had intervened to save it.
I thought my dear must her own soul destroy,
So did fanaticism and hate enslave it,
And this brought forth a dream and soon enough
This dream itself had all my thought and love.
And when the Fool and Blind Man stole the bread
Cuchulain fought the ungovernable sea;
Heart-mysteries there, and yet when all is said
It was the dream itself enchanted me:
Character isolated by a deed
To engross the present and dominate memory.
players and painted stage took all my love,
And not those things that they were emblems of.
III
Those masterful images because complete
Grew in pure mind, but out of what began?
A mound of refuse or the sweepings of a street,
Old kettles, old bottles, and a broken can,
Old iron, old bones, old rags, that raving slut
Who keeps the till. Now that my ladder's gone,
I must lie down where all the ladders start
In the foul rag-and-bone shop of the heart.
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939).
