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Ruben Dario

"If small is one's country, great ones dream it." —Rubén Darío

Momotombo

O vieux Momotombo, colasse chauve et nu... V.H.

The train was rolling on its rail tracks.

Those were the days of my golden spring

and it was in my Nicaragua natal.

Suddenly, among the cups of the trees, I saw a Giant cone,

 "bald and naked",  and full of old triumphant pride......

Oh Momtombo raucous and sonorous! 

I love you, because at your evocation come to me again,

obeying to a personal claim,

perfumes of my infancy, breezes of my childhood

                                                                                                                     Rubén Darío
 

Far Away and Long Ago

Ox that I saw in my childhood, as you steamed
in the burning gold on the Nicaraguan sun,
there on the rich plantation filled with tropical
harmonies; woodland dove, of the woods that sang
with the sound of the wind, of axes, of birds and wild bulls:
I salute you both, because you are both my life.

You, heavy ox, evoke the gentle dawn
that signaled it was time to milk the cow,
when my existence was all white and rose;
and you, sweet mountain dove, cooing and calling,
you signify all that my own springtime, now
so far away, possessed of the Divine Springtime.

                                                                                            Rubén Darío

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Youth, Divine Treasure

 

Youth, divine treasure, already gone to not return!

When I want to cry, I do not cry,

and sometimes I cry without wanting to.

 

                                                                                           Rubén Darío

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Toward the close of the last century, the poetry of the Spanish-speaking world was pallid, feeble, almost a corpse.   It needed new life and a new direction. 

The great poet who changed the course of Spanish poetry and brought it into the mainstream of twentieth-century Modernism was Félix Rubén García Sarmiento (1867-1916) of Nicaragua, who called himself Rubén Darío.

If you would like to contact Oscar send E-mail to oscar@baltodano.com

or write to:

Oscar Baltodano

Contiguo Casa de Cultura,

Diriamba, Nicaragua

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