La Araucana

Arauco, thin fury,
cup of gunpowder and blood,
poisoned stronghold
tearing at its fabric,
fair wood mistreated by the gust and the kiss
and the buried rage of your dead.

Arauco, clear and solemn
extreme bastion of America,
book of solid dust,
rough saltpeter flower,
dark vessel of ashes
that we drink in vigil
to make of your fallen
another spike,
fundamental,
loving
and whole.

The dark time of the snow has come,
the iron, the swastika cross has come,
the fire burning with screams has come,
the myth with its ambush has come,
the ambush with its present,
the present with its hollow,
the hollow of every race,
the memory that fiercely binds,
but the rope that falls around the neck
and that moment that was so beautiful
and the beautiful that was the strong
and the strong that was mine
and the mine that is so everyone’s
and tonight it softens me the way
of the peoples and their history,
that shatters their elusive glory,
that kills their light in dreams,
that nails them in the middle of their efforts,
that robs them of memory, oh.

So much pain dripping from your stones.
So much sullen fury disarmed.
So many thugs breaking your bones.

So much patience in the face of so much death,
so much damned backstabbing.
They will mature calling us,
they will mature naming us daily,
inflating
like a sail where the people blow
their winged intuition,
their clarity
fundamental,
loving and whole.

The wind from the willows comes turning,
the word cracks the evils,
a clear and simple book walks,
the loves burn like torrents,
the plow writes its furrow,
the heron flies marking the time,
and is it perhaps a spring
that channels the living clock,
that ruffles the whole earth,
that hinders the indifferent,
that prunes among the torrents,
little by little the solid pain.
The end of the night has taken its time,
it has stuck the spell on it,
but having precise signs
in tree rings with earth,
and existing tenacious proofs,
we already know there will be a war
the time before urging peace, oh.

You will sprout for us,
you will sprout for us,
you will sprout for us, Arauco,
like a red branch,
hard,
sullen
and full of blood and resentment
striking deep.

Rise up,
rise up,
rise up, Arauco,
with an old hand where heroic dwells
the high pupil of the rifle
looking
far.