La Colmena

(A Nicanor Parra)

I don’t know who thought of the proud birds
an invention of cages,
nor who said that the idea in motion bears the mark
of prison on its face,
nor who thinks it’s possible to reduce four walls
to a thousand cardinal points,
nor who pays such tribute to their prodigious blindness
by building the beehive.

I don’t know how the powers dismissed
the secret of the cells,
if a sparrow named Puschkin invented the Russian tongue
in the dungeons of his time,
if with just one hand maneuvering among bricks
Cervantes brought light to Spain,
and if the prison floor has been the most fertile furrow
of insurrectionary America.

There are those who believe that by closing the window
they strangle the horizon.
There are those who dream of imprisoned honey
cutting off its flavors.
There are those who copy the busy bees
their dynamic prison.
And there are those who rely on the opaque religion
of the beehive
to drown out the voice of the world.

Considering that in evening regions
the freest is in the stocks,
that the landowners blame each other
running their captivities,
that men don’t stay silent
even before the scorching file
of a prison claw
and not a few gave life to continents meditating
in the gloomy dungeons.

Considering that in the sparkling ages
a dungeon becomes a school,
that bars and guards are useless
as supports of the landscape,
that the city is filled with the stinging
repulsion of the bars.

And the powers retreat cautiously before the planting
of evocative barbed wire.

It’s hard to understand that there are those who copy the bees
busy in their dynamic prison,
that there are those still struggling with the honey of thought
imprisoning its flavors,
that there are those who believe that by bricking up the window
they annihilate the horizon
and that the opaque religion of the beehive
is enough to fill the world with shit.