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Viva La Cordillera De Los Andes By Nicanor Parra, Translated By T Wignesan

Viva la Cordillera de los Andes by Nicanor Parra, Translated by T. Wignesan

       Long Live! The Andes Mountain Range!

	I’m seized with a mad rage to yell
	long live the Andes Mountain Range
	may the Costa Mountain Range lie low slain

	The reason I can hardly divine
	   but I can’t hold myself back:
	Long Live! The Andes Mountain Range!
	May the Costa Mountain Range lie low slain!

	For forty full years now
       I’ve wanted to step over the horizon,
    go far beyond the limitations of my myopia,
	but I just didn’t dare.
	Now, by no means, Gentlemen
    is there an end to my ratiocinations:
	Long Live! The Andes Mountain Range!
	May the Costa Mountain Range lie low slain!

	Have they heard what I said?
	There’s an end to my ratiocinations!
       Long Live! The Andes Mountain Range!
       May the Costa Mountain Range lie low slain!

	Doubt there’s none over my lack of response
    if they sever my vocal chords 
	(in such a case as this
	   it’s almost certain they will)
	      well, if they do stifle my voice
	I would like to say I have no choice	
	but to accept the dashing of my very last hope.


         	I am a merchant
        indifferent to the positions of the sun 
	a professor clad in green-coloured trousers
	who comes apart drop by drop as dew
	an insignificant bourgeois is what I am
	in what way do red clouds matter to me?
	Nevertheless I appear on balconies
	   in order to shout out what I offer:
      Long Live! The Andes Mountain Range!
      May the Costa Mountain Range lie low slain!

	Pardon me if I’m going out of my mind
	while in the garden made by Nature
	but I have to keep shouting till death:
       Long Live! The Andes Mountain Range!
       May the Costa Mountain Range lie low slain!

© T. Wignesan – Paris,  2016

Copyright © T Wignesan

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