There is a right
that’s natural to love: Does it reside,
Chianti, in the bitter drop of your biting
wine, that speaks and enlivens, or in the just and wise
union of beauty and desire?
When it is lovely is when it is mine:
free of seduction’s vile deception
without false adoration:
by small quantities of yellow
gold stripes the stone: for me gold
is the soft hair covering the
At birth my fame was engraved in my crib,
The sun consecrated the sky on my forehead.
Love is all I know. I tremble with fear
when, as snakes, the passions
of a man firmly hug around my knee,
my muscles are bound, and my wings are cast,--
the childish fight, the hot headedness:
they cause shaking, not for me, in my wings
their never-arriving I would conceal
so none could seem them: humanity’s scourge
is my scourge: my cheeks
suffer the evil of the Universe:
my love is crazy, and, like the sun, breaks
into light, paints the cloud, cheers the wave.
And with a soft heart, like the hand
of friendship that tames a tempestuous tiger,
that shades the shadow, and palely exudes
its stellar beauty in the darkened
gulfs, tremendous chasms, and treacherous
destroyers, where the wolf gives vigil,
dressed in the night, which it fears
with the brilliance dawn’s awakening.
Translation of Jose Marti, Un Vino Chianti, Versos del Destierro)
that’s natural to love: Does it reside,
Chianti, in the bitter drop of your biting
wine, that speaks and enlivens, or in the just and wise
union of beauty and desire?
When it is lovely is when it is mine:
free of seduction’s vile deception
without false adoration:
by small quantities of yellow
gold stripes the stone: for me gold
is the soft hair covering the
At birth my fame was engraved in my crib,
The sun consecrated the sky on my forehead.
Love is all I know. I tremble with fear
when, as snakes, the passions
of a man firmly hug around my knee,
my muscles are bound, and my wings are cast,--
the childish fight, the hot headedness:
they cause shaking, not for me, in my wings
their never-arriving I would conceal
so none could seem them: humanity’s scourge
is my scourge: my cheeks
suffer the evil of the Universe:
my love is crazy, and, like the sun, breaks
into light, paints the cloud, cheers the wave.
And with a soft heart, like the hand
of friendship that tames a tempestuous tiger,
that shades the shadow, and palely exudes
its stellar beauty in the darkened
gulfs, tremendous chasms, and treacherous
destroyers, where the wolf gives vigil,
dressed in the night, which it fears
with the brilliance dawn’s awakening.
Translation of Jose Marti, Un Vino Chianti, Versos del Destierro)
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