"Portraits of loss in Katrina" (2005) de Chris Jordan
Es vano el pacífico ruido
que despierta la ciudad innoble,
de distinta manera ganaron espíritus mejores
su patriótico renombre.
Hay un campo al otro lado de esta corriente,
no hollado por pie alguno,
pero que en mi sueño produce
un grano más rico que cualquier otro.
Déjame creer un sueño tan querido,
algún corazón latió alto aquel día,
por encima de esta pequeña provincia,
y con Inglaterra lejos.
Algún héroe del molde antiguo,
algún brazo armado de señorial riqueza,
con fuerza no-comprada, y fe no-vendida,
hizo honor a este pedazo de tierra.
Quien buscó el resultado mostró su corazón,
y no pidieron tregua,
aquellos cuyo valor libre y natal no fue sobornado
por el proyecto de una paz.
Los hombres que aquel día estuvieron a esa altura
se han ido hace mucho;
una mano distinta dirige la lucha
y la piedra sagrada.
Tú fuiste las ciudades griegas entonces,
las romas recién nacidas,
donde los campesinos de Nueva Inglaterra
mostraron una riqueza romana.
En vano busco en esta tierra extranjera
para encontrar nuestro Bunker Hill,
y Lexington y Concord no están
junto a un río de Esparta.
(Henry David Thoreau: Ah, 'is in vain the peaceful din)
Traducción de Guillermo Ruiz
Daniel Webster, 1820
"We have come to this Rock, to record here our homage for our Pilgrim Fathers; our sympathy in their sufferings; our gratitude for their labours; our admiration of their virtues; our veneration for their piety; and our attachment to those principles of civil and religious liberty, which they encountered the dangers of the ocean, the storms of heaven, the violence of savages, disease, exile, and famine, to enjoy and establish. – And we would leave here, also, for the generations which are rising up rapidly to fill our places, some proof, that we have endeavored to transmit the great inheritance unimpaired; that in our estimate of public principles, and private virtue; in our veneration of religion and piety; in our devotion to civil and religious liberty; in our regard to whatever advances human knowledge, or improves human happiness, we are not altogether unworthy of our origin…"
Alexis DeTocqueville, 1835
Alexis DeTocqueville, 1835
"This Rock has become an object of veneration in the United States. I have seen bits of it carefully preserved in several towns in the Union. Does this sufficiently show that all human power and greatness is in the soul of man? Here is a stone which the feet of a few outcasts pressed for an instant; and the stone becomes famous; it is treasured by a great nation; its very dust is shared as a relic."
http://www.pilgrimhall.org/Rock.htm
Esta es una fuente para la versión original del poema
ReplyDeletehttp://www.walden.org/Institute/thoreau/writings/poetry/Poetry.htm
“Ah, 'Tis in Vain the Peaceful Din...”
by Henry D. Thoreau
Ah, ‘tis in vain the peaceful din
That wakes the ignoble town,
Not thus did braver spirits win
A patriot’s renown.
There is one field beside this stream,
Wherein no foot does fall,
But yet it beareth in my dream
A richer crop than all.
Let me believe a dream so dear,
Some heart beat high that day,
Above the petty Province here,
And Britain far away;
Some hero of the ancient mould,
Some arm of knightly worth,
Of strength unbought, and faith unsold,
Honored this spot of earth;
Who sought the prize his heart described,
And did not ask release,
Whose free-born valor was not bribed
By prospect of a peace.
The men who stood on yonder height
That day are long since gone;
Not the same hand directs the fight
And monumental stone.
Ye were the Grecian cities then,
The Romes of modern birth,
Where the New England husbandmen
Have shown a Roman worth.
In vain I search a foreign land
To find our Bunker Hill,
And Lexington and Concord stand
By no Laconian rill.