Classic Poem

Translucency

I am a pensive soul. Do you know
What a pensive soul is? — Sad,
But with that cool
Melancholy
Of all soft
Translucencies. — All that exists,
Turning diaphanous, is serene and sad.

A Sabine pilgrim
Beholds in the quick
Transparencies of the voicy water

All the fugitive
Changes of his hair —
O Sabine pilgrim!

A cloud, making a twin of its image, a cloud
Floats on the fountains, rises on high.

God, in deep silences, God
Sees Himself in the mirror of Himself —

Life knocks at the door
Like a wild woman who wastes her nights:
— " Open to me! It is time!
You singers, listen
To the external noises! "
" Open and listen
To the external voices! ... "

My soul does not hear her, my senses are asleep,
My soul and my senses are slumbering deep.

The river's sin is in its flowing;
Quietness, my soul,
Is the wisdom
Of the fountain.
The stars fear
To be shipwrecked in the perennial turmoil
Of water curling in spirals:
When the wave is in ecstasy, the stars people its crystals.

Conscience,
Be clear;
But with that rare
Inconsistency
Of all projections on a mirror.
To importunate Life, return
Only a reflection
Of its furtive passage in the moonlight.

Soul, become deep;
That flower and foliage
May print on you their fugitive trace;
That star and hirsute cloud
May mistake their route
And in your clear stretches find
A divine prolonging of their own abyss.
So, by the virtue of a singular fortune,
The infinite and you will be the same.EnglishAmado Nervo