The Sound of the Wind - Porfirio Barba Jacob

The sound of the wind in the arcade

holds within it the key to myself:

I am a strengthened puissance,

I am a lamentation of the abyss.

In the midst of the sidereal choirs

I hear a thing in me that’s out of tune.

My actions and my songs

had a very particular rhythm.

I came to the torrent of life

in Santa Rosa de Osos,

in a midnight all in fire

in luminaries of blurry omens.

I took possession of the earth,

mine in dreams, linen and bread;

and, changing the rules of war

I was Eve… and I was Adam.

I embraced the ripe field

as if it were a woman,

and a dark wine of pleasure

muddled me.

I relished the voice of the wind

as if it were a ripe fruit,

and I ate it… with a plaint

of greediness in my heart.

And in the day winged skiff

and to the beat of the sea at night

my fantasy drifted

in a beam of solar light.

I went after the supreme form,

after the cloud and the nightingale

and the crystal, the youth and the gem

of heartache.

I went to the Orient, the Orient,

towards the islands of light,

where an ardent people raised

sublime hymns to the blue.

Crossing then Palestine

I saw the face of Benjamin,

his fine mouth, his limpid eye

and his crimson rapture.

Or in Greece in the golden day,

when Pan gave it the pipe,

Socrates loved in the sonorous

choir that sings of joy.

Or with the zeal and the ardor of the dove

in rut, in the Araby of Allah

I followed the course of Mahomet

for the beauty of Abdallah.

Abdallah was something more beautiful

than laurel and lyre and flute and honey;

when a maiden was taken to him,

a hundred maidens died for him!

My hands gathered in the boundaries

to measure the immensity,

but my heart looked elsewhere

for the light, for love, for truth.

My feet dug in the ground

like the very hoof of Lucifer,

and something in me wanted to fly

through the mist, towards the rose of dawn.

But the mysterious lady

of the splendorous hair

comes and lays her hand

and instills in me a fatal love.

And all other things in life

are nothing but that fatal love,

with a few lamps lit

before the altar of the ideal.

And to wander, wander alone,

the light of Saturn on my brow,

broken topmast on the waves,

swaying.

And a glory in my choleric soul

that defies the frowning destiny:

the pride of being — oh America! —

the Ashaverus of your poetry…

And in the fleeting flower of the moment

searching for the lost aroma,

and in a pleasure without thoughts

discovering the key of oblivion.

Afterwards a wind… a wind… a wind…

and in that wind, my lamentation!

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Porfirio Barba Jacob [Miguel Ángel Osorio Benítez; aka Ricardo Arenales and Marín Jiménez] (1883 – 1942) Colombia

Translated by Nicolás Suescún

Source: Poetry International