PROPERTIES OF THE SORROW

You will assume the voice of a people
and it will be the voice of your people
and you will be, forever, people,
and you'll suffer, and you'll wait,
and you'll be always in the dust
a dust cloud will follow you.
And you'll be hungry, and you'll be thirsty,
you won't be able to write the poems,
and you'll be quiet all the night
while your people sleeps,
and only you will be awaken,
and you'll be awaken for all.
You were not born to be asleep:
you were given birth to watch over
in the long night of your people.
You will be the living word,
the living, bitter word.
Words won't exist no more,
but the man assuming the sorrow
of his people, and it is a silence.
You'll stop counting the syllables,
lacing the knot on your tie:
you'll be a people, walking
between a bitter cloud of dust
high the life and high the nations,
an ennobled condition.
Not all will be, however, silence.
So you will say the just word,
you'll say it in the right, just moment.
You won't say your word
with an anthological will,
but honestly,
furiously, without thinking
in any posterity,
if it's not your people's.
Perhaps you are killed or perhaps
you are laughed at, perhaps you are betrayed;
those are all banalities.
What is worth is the conscience
of being nothing if you're not your people.
And you, gravely, have chosen.
After your strict silence,
decidedly you walk.

Vicent Andrés Estellés