Rubén Darío: Song of Autumn in Spring / Canción de Otoño en Primavera

Rubén Darío (Nicaragua, 1867-1916)
Canción de Otoño en Primavera
.

Juventud, divino tesoro,
ya te vas para no volver.
Cuando quiero llorar, no lloro,
y a veces lloro sin querer.

Plural ha sido la celeste
historia di mi corazón.
Era una dulce niña, en este
mundo de duelo y aflicción.

Miraba como el alba pura;
sonreía como una flor.
Era su cabellera obscura
hecha de noche y de dolor.

Yo era tímido como un niño.
Ella, naturalmente, fue
para mi amor hecho de armiño,
Herodías y Salomé.

Juventud, divino tesoro,
ya te vas para no volver.
Cuando quiero llorar, no lloro,
y a veces lloro sin querer.

Y más consoladora y más
halagadora y expresiva
la otra fue más sensitiva,
cual no pensé encontrar jamás.

Pues a su continua ternura
una pasión violenta unía.
En un peplo de gasa pura
una bacante se envolvía.

En brasos tomó mi ensueño
y lo arrulló como un bebé
y le mató, triste y pequeño,
falto de luz, falta de fe.

Juventud, divino tesoro,
ya te vas para no volver.
Cuando quiero llorar, no lloro,
y a veces lloro sin querer.

Otra juzgó que era mi boca
El estuche de su pasión;
y que me roería, loca,
con sus dientes el corazón,

poniendo en un amor de exceso
la mira de su voluntad,
mientras eran abrazo y beso
síntesis de la eternidad;

y de nuestra carne ligera
imaginó siempre un Edén,
sin pensar que la Primavera
y la carne acaban también.

Juventud, divino tesoro,
ya te vas para no volver.
Cuando quiero llorar, no lloro,
y a veces lloro sin querer.

Y las demás! En tantos climas,
en tantas tierras siempre son,
si no pretextos di mis rimas,
fantasmas de mi corazón.

En vano busqué a la princesa
que estaban triste de esperar.
La vida es dura. Amarga y pesa.
Ya no hay princesa que cantar.

Mas a pesar del tiemp terco,
Mi sed de amor no tiene fin;
con el cabello gris, me acerco
a los rosales del jardín.

Juventud, divino tesoro,
ya te vas para no volver.
Cuando quiero llorar, no lloro,
y a veces lloro sin querer.

¡Mas es mía el alba de oro!

Rubén Darío (Nicaragua, 1867-1916)
Song of Autumn in Springtime

.

Youth’s a treasure that only the gods may keep,
and how it flees from me, forever – now.
I can’t seem to cry, when I need to,
and sometimes tears come when I don’t want them to.
.
The stories of this heart are countless,
can never be told – and
she was a darling child,
in this world of pain and woe.
.
Like daybreak, pure delight she was;
her smile – like flowers after rain.
Her hair was as the night,
fashioned of darkness and unhappiness.
.
Like a kid I was, awkward and shy,
couldn’t ever have been any other way.
And she was as Herodias or Salomé,
my love ermine-draped.
.
Youth’s a treasure only the gods may keep,
and how it flees from me, forever – now.
I can’t seem to cry, when I need to,
and sometimes tears come when I don’t want them to.
.
And there was another one…
More sensitive, quiet, loving, kind;
her will to live, to love, was greater
than I’d hoped to find.
.
Yet there went with her tender grace
a kind of violence of love;
in a peplos of loveliness
was hidden a passion – raving like a Maenad.
.
Youth’s a treasure only the gods may keep,
and how it flees from me, forever – now.
I can’t seem to cry, when I need to,
and sometimes tears come when I don’t want them to.
.
Still another imagined my lips
to be a casket made to bury our love.
She gnawed at the very heart of me,
that’s what she strove to do.

Excess of passion, that was her will;
love’s flame for me she was,
and she could make each embrace, each kiss,
Eternity in synthesis.
.
She pronounced our flesh could never die,
that Desire might restore Eden;
but she forgot one thing:
that the flowers of Spring, and this flesh,
an End must bring.
.
Youth’s a treasure only the gods may keep,
and how it flees from me, forever – now.
I can’t seem to cry, when I need to,
and sometimes tears come when I don’t want them to.
.
And all the others!
Different climates, many lands,
they were just a pretext for my rhymes,
phantoms of my heart.
.
I sought for a princess in vain,
one who had waited, a-sorrowing.
This life is hard, and bitter with pain.
And there’s no princess exists now to sing.
.
Yet despite th’autumnal season’s meanings,
My thirst for love knows no end;
Gray-haired I am, yet still
you’ll find me circling the late-bloom rose.
.
Youth’s a treasure only the gods may keep,
and how it flees from me, forever – now.
I can’t seem to cry, when I need to,
and sometimes tears come when I don’t want them to.

Ah, but the Dawn belongs to me!

. . . . .

Translator’s note:
I have been faithful to the title of the original, calling my English-language version Song of Autumn in Springtime. Yet something doesn’t feel right; Song of Springtime in Autumn would fit Darío’s content better. True, he writes as if an old man reminisces – there is great nostalgia – about past Romance, yet he also tells us that he will still seek out the blooming rose in the garden of Life, and that Dawn belongs to him. And isn’t the dawn that fresh beginning to each day – its Springtime?
A.B.