Translation:The Black Heralds (1918)/The Eternal Dice
For Manuel Gonzalez Prada, this coarse
and selected emotion, one for which, with great
enthusiasm, the great master applauded
me.
My God, I’m mourning the being I live;
it weighs on me to have eaten your bread from you;
but this poor pensive clay
is not a fermented scab in your side:
you don’t have Marias who depart!
My God, if you had been a man,
you’d know now how to be God;
but you, who were always good,
you feel nothing of your creation.
And man does have to endure you: God is he!
Now that there are candles in my sorcerer eyes,
as in a man condemned,
My God, you’ll light up all your candles,
and we’ll play with the old dice...
Perhaps, oh player! in playing with the luck
of the entire universe,
the baggy eyes of death will arise
like two funerary aces of mud.
My God, and on this deaf, dark night,
you won’t be able to play anymore, because Earth
is a mangled die and already round
from rolling off carelessly,
that cannot stop but in a hole,
in the hole of an immense tomb.