A Song for Bolivar

by Pablo Neruda

(Translated by D.Walsh)

Our father, who art in the earth, in the water, in the air,

of all our great and silent breadth,

all bear thy name, father, in our land;

thy name the sugar cane rises to the sweetness;

Bolivar tin has a Bolivar brilliance,

the Bolivar bird over the Bolivar volcano,

the potato, the salpetre, the special shadows,

the currents, the veins of phosphoric stone,

all that is ours comes from your extinguished life.

Thy heritage was rivers, plains, bell towers,

thy heritage is this day our daily bread, father.

 

I came upon Bolivar, one long morning,

in Madrid, at the entrance to the Fifth Regiment.

Father, I said to him, are you, or are you not, or who are you ?

And looking at the Mountain Barrack, he said :-

"I awake every hundred years, when the people awake" .