translated from the Spanish by Gabriel Gudding
A singer goes all over the world
impassioned or bored
In a little train or a white train
beside the gulls or through the grain
A singer walks into wars and peaces
into civil wars, trench wars, trade wars
through discord or concord
a singer goes to all these places
A poet moves in the world
On the ridge spine of the elephant
into the narrows of the Hellespont
On a palanquin, in gemmy silks
she crosses glaciers in the Alps
On a cloud backed and glinting jet
into Buddhist and bright Tibet
In car into St. Lucia
On a dark train through Galicia
Over the pampas and the flats
on American colts
She goes by river in a canoe
or props herself in the banging prow
of a pelagic freighter
or she simply rides an escalator
She brings her nose to archipelagoes
And carts her ears into Tangiers
On a dromedary across the sands
by jiggling boats, she visits lands
She goes to the tundra’s edge
on an expeditious sledge
And far from the equator’s flora
she thrills to the boreal aurora
The singer strolls through hissing crops
across the rows and by the cows
She enters her London on a bus
her Jerusalem on an ass
She goes with mailbags and pouches of the State
to open doors to eternal things
To salve the sores of human beings
is why she sings.
El Canto Errante
El cantor va por todo elmundo
sonriente o meditabundo.
El cantor va sobre latierra
en blanca paz o en roja guerra.
Sobre el lomo del elefante
por la enorme India alucinante.
En palanquín y en seda fina
por el corazón de la China;
en automóvil en Lutecia;
en negra góndola en Venecia;
sobre las pampas y losllanos
en los potros americanos;
por el río va en la canoa,
o se le ve sobre la proa
de un steamer sobre elvasto mar,
o en un vagón de sleeping-car.
El dromedario del desierto,
barco vivo, le lleva a un puerto.
Sobre el raudo trineo trepa
en la blancura de la estepa.
O en el silencio de cristal
que ama la aurora boreal.
El cantor va a pie por losprados,
entre las siembras y ganados.
Y entra en su Londres en eltren,
y en asno a su Jerusalén.
Con estafetas y con malas,
va el cantor por la humanidad.
En canto vuela, con sus alas:
Armonía y Eternidad.
Copyright © 2008 by Gabriel Gudding. Originally published in Words Without Borders (2008). Used with the permission of the author.