The moose hunt is underway. Again. I noticed all the signs went up along the roadside this sunny-frosty morning. And then I spotted whole groups of people in camouflage and orange suits carrying their guns around in various fields and parking lots all over the area.
Seems a little bit barbaric.
Conditions
–Pablo Neruda
With these moody negations
I said goodbye to the mirrors
and gave up my profession:
better a blind man in a corner
singing songs to the world
without setting eyes on a soul,
if part of me is so like the others!Nevertheless I kept trying:
how to look back at myself
to wherever it is I sat blinded
when my total condition was dark?
There was nothing to show for my singing
in a blind rabble of singers:
but the harsher the street sounds became,
the sweeter I seemed to myselfCondemned to self-love,
I lived the exterior life of a hypocrite
hiding the depths of love
my defects had brought down on my head.
I keep on being happy,
disclosing to nobody
my ambiguous malady:
the grief I endure for self-love,
who was never so loved in return.
Original
Condiciones
Con tantas tristes negativas
me despedí de los espejos
y abandoné mi profesiòn:
quise ser ciego en una esquina
y cantar para todo el mundo
sin ver a nadie porque todos
se me parecían un poco.Pero buscaba mientras tanto
còmo mirarme hacia detrás,
hacia donde estaba sin ojos
y era oscura mi condiciòn.
No saqué nada con cantar
como un Ciego ücl populadlo;
mientras más amarga la calle
me parecía yo más dulce.Condenado a quererme tanto
me hice un hipòcrita exterior
ocultando el amor profundo
que me causaban mis defectos.
Y así sigo siendo feliz
sin que jamas se entere nadie
de mi enfermedad insondable:
de lo que sufrí por amarme
sin ser, tal vez, correspondido.