Vicente Huidobro

 

(Dying sun / There is a breakdown in the motor / And a springlike aroma / Remains in the air on passing / Some place / a song / WHERE ARE YOU / One evening like this / I looked for you in vain / Over the mist of all the roads / I kept on running into myself / And in the smoke of my cigar / There was a lost bird / No one would answer / The last shepherds had drowned / And the confused sheep / Were eating flowers and giving no honey / The wind that was passing by / Piles up the wool / Among the clouds / Wet from my tears / Why cry again / over the already lamented / And since the sheep are eating flowers / Sign that you have just passed by)

Huidobro himself has explicated this poem, or at least tried to. When he was in Chile in 1919, spreading the word about the new aesthetic, he was taken for an iconoclast. Seeking to correct this misinterpretation, he visited Hernán Díaz Arrieta, his conservative-minded friend from the days of Musa Joven and Azul, and then critic for the influential weekly Zig-Zag. As evidence of his classicism, he pointed out «Égloga» and tried to explain its imagery. The critic, although unconvinced, has fortunately left us a record of the attempt:(7)

After a long conversation with the author [of «Égloga»], we have arrived at the following conclusions. The dying sun offers no difficulty; it could be creationist, just as well as classicist, or even romantic. It is the same old sun that dies out every afternoon. The breakdown in the motor? I first took that to mean that the poet had gone on a trip and that his car had broken down. But no; the breakdown is suffered by the sun and it is for this reason that it is dying. That's what Huidobro says. Alright. At bottom, it is not really an important issue. Continuing along in the poem, one hears a lost song, someone is looking for something, remembers, feels alone. All this is stated in a rather extravagant manner; but when have poets ever expressed themselves like the rest of us? Suddenly, «in the smoke of my cigar a lost bird». And this? What is it? No one replies; the last shepherds are drowned, in other words they are silenced. Someone, then goes on calling out for someone else. One comes across some sheep strangely confused. Up above, the clouds pile up like mountains of wool. A reflection of contentment. And the explanation for the sheep eating flowers: someone special had just been there . . .
— Do you understand now?
— Very little.
— But this is a translation of an eclogue of San Juan de la Cruz!
— It doesn't surprise me; if you had translated 

translation by Rene Dacosta