The Emigrant's Rose

O my rose, you flew off like a winged creature
and did not come back as birds are wont to do.
O Lord—the winds assailed her,
and she hovered above the hills and the harbors
and crouched like a crippled bird
upon the face of the ashen swamp.

I watched her in the water at dusk,
the filth circling round and round her,
as if she were a twilight glow amid the darkness;
her petals scattered like potsherds
upon the surface of the ashen, stagnant water,
disdaining its black body.

My grief for her! How abject the captive
trembling in the grip of the abject slave!
O Lord, had You cast her into the brook,
she would have perished dancing for joy,
innocent of the defilement of the mire,
in the slime of the ashen swamp.

Ah, my rose, in your spotless white dress
and your coal-black fortune lies the mockery of fate.
I have no hand in the shining star
that hid itself behind the smothering clouds;
its radiance was lost, like your dewy fragrance
breathing over the ashen swamp.

Had you been a thorn, you would not have feared the winds,
nor tasted the torment of exile;
had the prodding of the insolent reached out to you,
his hand would have come back covered with wounds—
your watering place the sweet stream of the highlands.

And the water quivered at a misgiving that tore
its entrails—at the whisperings of the breeze—
and swallowed the rose; only the perfume
of her drifted on through the cells of the mist,
like the soul of a martyr
risen above the ashen swamp.

(Caracas, Venezuela)