Praise Life

This country least, but every inhabited country
Is clotted with human anguish.
Remember that at your feasts.

And this is no new thing but from time out of mind,
No transient thing, but exactly
Conterminous with human life.

Praise life, it deserves praise, but the praise of life
That forgets the pain is a pebble
Rattled in a dry gourd.

Ningún otro daño

Días en blanco y horas
sin paz. La sombra y sus campanas.

¿Dónde está el álbum de fotografías?
¿Qué se hizo de  mis libros?

Sueña otra  vez. Te ocultas e imaginas
que nadie va a saber tu paradero.

Al despertar dirás: melancolía
no hay ningún otro daño que pueda comparársete

Elegías a Julia Gay - José A. Goytisolo

Song of the builders

On a summer morning
I sat down
on a hillside
to think about God -

a worthy pastime.
Near me, I saw
a single cricket;
it was moving the grains of the hillside

this way and that way.
How great was its energy,
how humble its effort.
Let us hope

it will always be like this,
each of us going on
in our inexplicable ways
building the universe.