dormir en el olvido

H. Melville: CONMEMORACIÓN DE UNA VICTORIA NAVAL

Pero raramente la corona de laurel se concibe
pura de pensativas, tristes violetas;
hay una luz y una sombra en cada hombre
que al final alcanza su punto más alto
cuidando en la noche la eterna chispa.
Jamás puede ser soberbio;
él siente los espíritus que gozosos exaltaron su mérito,
dormir en el olvido... Blanco, el tiburón
se desliza a través del mar de fósforo.

H. Melville: MONODIA

Haberlo conocido, haberlo amado
luego de tanta soledad;
y ser entonces apartado en la vida
y no en el error;
y ahora por la muerte ponerle su sello:
¡Alíviame, un poco de alivio, canto mío!

Junto a las colinas invernales su montículo de ermitaño
tapizaba cándidos bancos de nieve,
y sin hogar el pinzón de las nieves aleteaba
debajo de los abetos fúnebres:
esmaltada ahora de hielo la claustral viña
que oculta el racimo más esquivo.

Versiones
en Alberto Girri, Obra poética III, Corregidor, Buenos Aires, 1980
por Herman Melville, New York, 1819-1891
imagen: Anónimo renacentista

Commemorative Of A Naval Victory

Sailors there are of the gentlest breed,
Yet strong, like every goodly thing;
The discipline of arms refines,
And the wave gives tempering.
The damasked blade its beam can fling;
It lends the last grave grace:
The hawk, the hound, and sworded nobleman
In Titian's picture for a king,
Are of hunter or warrior race.

In social halls a favored guest
In years that follow victory won,
How sweet to feel your festal fame
In woman's glance instinctive thrown:
Repose is yours--your deed is known,
It musks the amber wine;
It lives, and sheds a light from storied days
Rich as October sunsets brown,
Which make the barren place to shine.
But seldom the laurel wreath is seen
Unmixed with pensive pansies dark;
There's a light and a shadow on every man
Who at last attains his lifted mark--
Nursing through night the ethereal spark.
Elate he never can be;
He feels that spirit which glad had hailed his worth,
Sleep in oblivion.--The shark
Glides white through the phosphorus sea.


Monody

To have known him, to have loved him
after loneness long;
and then to be estranged in life,
and neither in the wrong;
and now for death to set his seal-
ease me, a little ease, my song!

By wintry hills his hermit-mound
the sheeted snow-drifts drape,
and houseless there the snow-bird flits
beneath the fir-trees'crape:
that hid the shyest grape.