>>211629633
>>211629760
Formal translation is prob better
Elegy 1938
Translated by John Ryle & Fábio Araújo
You work without joy in a decaying world,
where no form or action sets an example.
You laboriously practice universal gestures;
you feel heat and cold, a lack of money, hunger, and sexual desire.
Heroes fill the city parks where you drag yourself,
preaching virtue, renunciation, cold-bloodedness, and conception.
At night, if there's fog, bronze umbrellas open,
or you retreat to the volumes of sinister libraries.
You love the night for its power to annihilate,
and you know that, sleeping, problems spare you death.
But the terrible awakening proves the existence of the Great Machine,
and restores you, the small one, before indecipherable palms.
You walk among the dead and talk to them
about future events and spiritual affairs.
Literature ruined your best hours of love.
On the phone you wasted long, long time sowing.
Proud heart, you hurry to confess your defeat,
and postpone collective happiness to another century.
You accept the rain, the war, unemployment, and unfair distribution
because you cannot, alone, blow up the island of Manhattan.
