Ego Sum - Gaspar Octavio Hernández

Neither mother of Pearl’s complexion, nor locks of gold

Shall you see, like finery, adorning my frame;

neither sapphire’s light, celestial and pure,

trapped and shining, in the pit of my eyes

With the toasted skin of a sun-tanned moor,

with the dark eyes of fatal blackness,

from Ancón to dark green skirts

I was born before a sonorous Pacific sea.

I am a son of sea…because in my soul

There are, like upon waves, nights of calm,

and indefinable, nameless rages

an urgency to fight with myself,

when in recondite grief, I sink into the abyss

thinking I am only sea, cut into the shape of a man

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Gaspar Octavio Hernández (1893 - 1918) Panama

Translated by Lina M. Ferreira C.-V.

Source: inTRANSLATION