You may choose
among the fruits of the perfumed season;
but this is what I will show you:
two plump mangos
where you may suck the sun melted within.
Which will you take?
This one, as double and firm
as the breasts of a young girl,
and which is acid?
Or that one, pulpy and sweet as honey?
One will be only passionate delights,
but will have no offspring
and will be covered by the grass.
The other,
a spring gushing from the rock,
will refresh your throat
and then become a vault full of echoes in your courtyard,
and those who come after you will gather there fragments of the sun.
Jean-Joseph Rabearivelo (1901 - 1937) Madagascar
Translated by Leonard Fox
Source: Global Literature in Libraries
among the fruits of the perfumed season;
but this is what I will show you:
two plump mangos
where you may suck the sun melted within.
Which will you take?
This one, as double and firm
as the breasts of a young girl,
and which is acid?
Or that one, pulpy and sweet as honey?
One will be only passionate delights,
but will have no offspring
and will be covered by the grass.
The other,
a spring gushing from the rock,
will refresh your throat
and then become a vault full of echoes in your courtyard,
and those who come after you will gather there fragments of the sun.
Jean-Joseph Rabearivelo (1901 - 1937) Madagascar
Translated by Leonard Fox
Source: Global Literature in Libraries
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