Aquí estoy con mi corazón en la mano para ti. Siempre fue para ti.
Hoy no lo quieres.
¿Qué corazón prefieres?
Te ofrezco este porque es mi sangre.
Los antiguos de Mesoamérica lo ofrecían al sol.
Pero tú eres mi sol y quien me daba la luz, el agua, el maíz. Aquí
está mi corazón.
Alguien se sacrifica por ti que no soy yo.
Yo me sacrifico por ti y esta sangre derramada no te llega. Tú que
eras mi sol, y yo que era tu vida.
Guardaré este corazón en una vasija de piedra.
Algún día necesitarás mi sangre, aunque sea en sueños.
Yo lo sé.

Nota. Los corazones en el sacrificio azteca al sol eran depositados en el
cuauhxicalli, la jícara o vaso de águila, y a él descendía el guerrero celeste en
forma de colibrí a libar la miel (la sangre) de aquella flor.

Many centuries ago I too was a young poet.
I wrote about hopeless love affairs I surely had
about the life I spent in warm places
or snowy ones
or I imagined it all like every adolescent poet should.

Maybe I penned a powerful image
but nobody ever discovered it
nor was it ever read which is the worst
for a young poet.

I dreamed that some of my verses
made a famous poet tremble
then he would write asking to see the rest of my writing,
to visit his house or his country, drink his wine,
contemplate his enviable treasures
(some of Rimbaud’s used shoes for example,
young Yesenin’s peasant blouse
or the revolver
Mayakovsky used to commit suicide).

Other times I imagined I was welcomed by crowds
like the artists from international video clips.

Now I’m an aged poet
who wasn’t touched by the light of fame.

In a very distant time I was
the beautiful poet, tender and ingenuous.

It no longer matters to me if my poems are buried
in a computerized Postmodern library on some dusty shelf
in the farthest galaxy
of our Infinite Universe.

I only know that poems are the indecipherable hieroglyphs
of a species ever more endangered.

Archaeological ruins
sunken beneath tons of rock
rarely visible in tropical jungles
where many-colored exotic birds sang over them haphazardly
constructing
atop the millenarian past

their fleeting nests.

Traducción al inglés
por W. Nick Hill