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 PSALMS

onhy
 Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2022 with funding from
Kahle/Austin Foundation

https://archive.org/details/osalmsO000card_sOm5
 PSALMS
Ernesto Cardenal
Translated by Thomas Blackburn ¢ John Griffiths
John Heath-Stubbs ¢ Sylvester Houédard
Elizabeth Jennings ¢ Peter Levi and
Tony Rudolf

SHEED AND WARD ¢ LONDON

These translations first published
in Great Britain in 1981
by Sheed & Ward Limited
6 Blenheim Street London W1Y OSA
in conjunction with
Search Press Limited
Published in Spanish under the title
SALMOS in 1969 by
Ediciones Carlos Lohle, Buenos Aires
Copyright © 1969 by Ernesto Cardenal
These translations copyright © 1981
by Search Press Limited
All rights reserved
ISBN 0 7220 7016 0
Printed in Great Britain for Sheed & Ward Ltd,
2 Creechurch Lane, London EC3A 5AQ by
The Bowering Press Limited
Burrington Way Plymouth PL5 3NA
 Contents

’ As on the potter’s wheel (Psalm 104)

Blessed the man (Psalm 1)
Do you think I’m ambitious? (Psalm 131)
O God of vengeance (Psalm 94)
The wretched of the earth (Psalm 44)
Why have you left me? (Psalm 22)
Answer me when I call (Psalm 4)
Do me justice Lord (Psalm 26)
They freed me from the mafia (Psalm 31)
You made it public Lord (Psalm 35)
Hear my cries (Psalm 5)
Listen everybody (Psalm 49)
Jerusalem is a heap of rubble (Psalm 79)
Free me Lord (Psalm 7)
Lord I’m appealing to you (Psalm 17)
Help, Lord (Psalm 12)
Lord it’s incredible (Psalm 9)
When Israel left the ghettos (Psalm 114)
Their shares are grass (Psalm 37)
You will find no joy unless you stay with me (Psalm 16)
I call out in the night (Psalm 130)
By the waters of Babylon (Psalm 137)
Praise the Lord (Psalm 148)
Galaxies chant the glory of God (Psalm 19)
Praise the Lord (Psalm 150)
As on the potter’s wheel

Bless the Lord, O my soul

Lord my God you are great
You are clothed with the energy of atoms
as with a mantle
From a cloud of whirling cosmic dust
as on the potter’s wheel
you began to tease out the whorls of the galaxies
and the gas escapes from your fingers condensing and burning
and you were fashioning the stars
You made a spatterdash of planets like spores or seeds
and scattered comets like flowers
A sea of red waves was the whole planet
iron and red-hot molten rock
rising and falling like tides
and all the water steam
its dense clouds darkening the whole earth
and it began raining and raining for centuries and centuries
long rain for centuries on stony continents
and after aeons appeared the seas
and the mountains began to emerge
(the earth was in labour)
growing like great beasts
and to be eroded by the water
(remaining there like the débris of these times)
like piled-up rubble)
and the first molecule was made fecund by the power of water
and light
and the first bacterium divided
and in the Precambrian the first tenuous transparent alga
nourished by solar energy
and the flagellates transparent as little bells of glass
or jelly-like flowers
moved and reproduced
(and from thence proceeded the creation that we know)
And thence the first sponges
and jellyfish as of plastic,
polyps — all mouth and stomach
and the first molluscs
and the first echinoderms: the starfish and sea urchin.
And at the beginning of the Cambrian, sponges
covered the whole sea-bed
making reefs from pole to pole.
And in the middle Cambrian all these died out
And the first corals flourished
filling the deep with crimson skyscrapers
In the waters of the Silurian the first pincers: sea scorpions
and at the end of the Silurian the first fish ravening
like a diminutive shark (already with jaws)
The algae have turned into trees in the Devonian
learning to breathe

8
casting their spores and beginning to grow in forests
and the first stems and first leaves were born.
The first lowly animals colonized the land:
scorpions and spiders fleeing the competitiveness of the sea.
Fins grow and the first amphibians appear
and fins become feet.
Soft fleshy trees grew in the Palaeozoic swamps.
There were no flowers yet
and insects appear
dinosaurs and birds are born
and the first flowers are visited by the first bees.
In the Mesozoic the first timid mammals appear
small and warm-blooded
They bring forth their young alive and suckle them with
milk
and in the Eocene lemurs climbing on the branches
and the tarsiers with stereoscopic eyes like man’s
and at the beginning of the Quaternary you created man
You give the polar bear his coat the colour of the glacier
and the Arctic fox his, the colour of snow
You make the stoat brown in summer and white in winter
and you give the praying mantis its camouflage
You camouflage the butterflies with flower-colours
You shewed the beavers how to build their dams of sticks
and their lodges on the water
The grasshopper comes into the world knowing how to fly and
sing and what its food is
and the wasp knowing how to bore into tree trunks
to lay its eggs
and the spider how to weave its web
As soon as they are hatched the storks know where north and
south are
and with no-one to guide them fly in a northward direction
You gave speed to the cheetah
and suckers to the tree-frog
and a sense of smell to the moth
to find out the odour of the female in the night
at two miles distance
and luminous organs to crustaceans
and you give telescopic eyes to the fish of the great depths
and batteries to the electric eel
You invented the mechanisms whereby flowers are fertilized
You give seeds wings to fly on the wind
membranes as if they were butterflies.
Others have down to float on the wind
or they drop like puffs
or propellers
or parachutes
or float on the water like ships looking for markers
and pollen always knows its precise way:

10
it does not falter on the mesh of the style
before reaching the ovule

The eyes of all wait upon you, O Lord

and you give to each his food in due season
You open your hand
and you fill all things living with your blessings
To the humble copepod you give its diatoms
The sea anemones (fierce and voracious flowers)
beg you for nourishment
and you feed them
The cellophane ragworm
begs you for food with its hungry tentacles
You give algae and crabs to the dabchick and its young
and for the dunlin you give soft molluscs.
The sparrows have no barns nor tractors
yet you give them the grains that drop from lorries
on the highroad
on their way to the barn
And you give the nectar of flowers to the hummingbird
You give tender rice-grains to the bobolink
and fish to the kingfisher and his mate
Everyday the seagull finds his fish;
every night the owl his frogs and mice.
You prepare for the cuckoo his lunch of caterpillars
and woolly-bears
11
 You give the crow his crickets
Insects to the cricket chirping in his burrow
You give small red berries to the barbet
and he has more berries than he can eat
The chipmunk spends the winter asleep;
when he wakes up he has his seeds handy
and you open the first flowers of spring
when the first butterflies come out of their chrysalids
You open flowers in the morning for butterflies
and you close them in the evening when they go to sleep
You open others in the night for moths
that spend the whole day asleep in dark crannies
and begin to fly at nightfall
You wake the bumblebees from their winter sleep
the same day that you open the catkins of the willow

I will sing to the Lord as long as I live

I will write him psalms
May my song please him
Bless the Lord O my soul
Alleluia

Translated by fohn Heath-Stubbs

12
 Blessed the man

' Blessed the man who says no to the party

who will not join committees
and follow the line
who will not sit down with gangsters
or generals in council
plotting war to surpass all war
Blessed the man who will not report
brother or sister
neighbour or friend
Blessed the man who coughs at commercials
defies their radio
and knows their slogans for lies
He grows by the river of life

Translated by Fohn Griffiths

13
 Dagens ove
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Do you think I’m ambitious?

Lord
do you think
I’m ambitious?
that I’d like to be a millionaire
dream
of becoming a member of the cabinet
and maybe prime minister?
Lord
I’m not even interested in politics
I'd never accept a peerage
Not
that they’re likely to offer me one
I don’t own this house
I don’t have a bank account
I haven’t even got
an insurance policy
The only thing I have got
is you

If they were all like me

instead of leaving things to the government
would this
be a more interesting country?

Translated by Sylvester Houédard

15
O God of vengeance

‘When O
God
are you going to let
your divine vengeance
be seen?
How long
are you going to let
the party stay in power?
How much longer do we have to
go on listening
to their clichés?

Or maybe you’ve changed?

Don’t you care now
about victims of exploitation?
are you happy
seeing the masses oppressed?
Do you actually want people to think
you are
a blind force of nature?

something atavistic
left over in the subconscious?

You
the famous inventor of the brain

a
You think up this elegant system
with auditory nerve endings
and you can’t even hear?

You work out

the neurophysics of sight
and you can’t see?

Has your databank

been stopping print-outs
of our thoughts?

Haven’t you even taped

what we’ve been saying?

and you’re the guru

that brought us wisdom
the zen master
of bliss without tranquillizers

Lord

you can’t abandon people

not
when you see them like this

18
‘there just has to be a day
when law-courts stop being
the last place we’d look
for justice

or

you wouldn’t have done all that

to protect the partisans
we'd
all have been liquidated
you
wouldn’t have bothered
when they were hunting us down
and
the only thing that kept us
on the run
was you

no

you can’t have switched sides

you're
the one defence there is
against the system

19
it’s only you
could turn their own guns
against them
trap them
in their own
political blunders
and
wipe them
out

Translated by Sylvester Houédard

20
The wretched of the earth

.With our own ears we have heard

the story from our fathers’ lips:
the victories
in ancient days
because we did not put our faith in weapons,
did not depend on tanks for victory

But now you have forsaken us,

given aid and comfort to
their governing bureaucracies,
subsidized their party leaders,
propped up corrupt régimes

We are the displaced persons

the refugees
the stateless ones
We are the ka-tsetniks
condemned to forced labour
condemned to gas chambers

burned in the crematoria

we are anonymous ashes

We are the children of Auschwitz

the children of Buchenwald
of Belsen
Dachau

Ze
They used our skin for lampshades
our fat for bars of soap

They dragged us off

(and you let them),
sheep to the slaughter,
to the gas-chambers

They deported us
and you looked on

They put us up for sale:

there was no buyer

Piled into railway cars

we travelled like cattle
to fields lit up
and ringed with barbed wire

packed in lorries
for the gas-chambers

naked we went
into gas-chambers
upstairs and downstairs
in the gas-chambers

1p
-and they locked the doors
and put out the lights
and you veiled us with the shadow of death

and nothing survived

but mountains
of clothes
toys
shoes

And if we had forgotten

the name of our God in heaven
and turned to new leaders
would you not have known?

You who know the secrets of

the heart
have no need
for Secret Services

Every day they called the roll

so we might hear the names
of those marked down for gas-ovens that day

all day we’re made

ready for death
sheep for the slaughter

23
you dumped us naked in the range
of the flame-throwers

They have wiped your people off the earth’s face

your people exist no longer in geography
We wander from country to country without passports
with no means to identify ourselves

And now you are hidden, God

Why do you hide your face?

God, our God, why have you forgotten

the wretched of the earth?

rise, God,
rise, come
help us,
for God’s
sake,
yours

Translated by Tony Rudolf

24
 Why have you left me?

’ Lord O Lord my God

why have you left me?
I am a caricature of a man
People think I am dirt
they mock me in all the papers

I am encircled
there are tanks all round me
Machine-gunners have me in their sights
there is barbed wire about me
electrified wire
Iam on a list
I am called all day
They have tattooed me
and marked me with a number
They have photographed me behind the barbed wire
All my bones can be counted
as on an X-ray’film
They have stripped me of my identity
They have led me naked to the gas-chamber
They have shared out my clothes and my shoes
I call for morphine
and no one hears me
In my straitjacket I cry out
I scream all night in the mental home

fas)
 in the terminal ward
in the fever hospital
in the geriatric ward
in an agony of sweat in the psychiatric clinic
In the oxygen tent I suffocate
I weep in the police cell
in the torture chamber
in the orphanage

I am contaminated with radioactivity

no one comes near me
for Iam contagious

Yet
I shall tell my brothers and sisters
about you
I shall praise you in our nation
and my hymns will be heard
in a great generation
The poor will go to a banquet
and our people will give a great feast
the new people
yet to be born

Translated by John Griffiths

26
 Answer me when I call

. Answer me when I call

God of my innocence
You will free me from the torture chamber
the concentration camp
the dark cell of my agony

How long must we suffer them

bullies and leaders
in all their stupidity?
How long must we suffer their empty talk
propaganda
all propaganda?

Many ask
who will free us from their bombs
their nuclear submarines, their rocket launchers?
Lord brighter than a thousand bombs
look at us
and shine on us

Our hearts sing when you stir them

your joy is greater than their wine
all the wine at their banquets
I shall sleep when my head touches the pillow
nightmares will not trouble me
I shall not see as they do their victims accusing them
I need no tranquillizers, no sleeping pills
You Lord are my comforter
you are my strength

Translated by Fohn Griffiths

28
 Do me justice Lord

- Do me justice my Lord God

because I am innocent
Trusted you not leaders indecent
And perjured, perverted and mad

Defend me from false evidence

because I have never been
at their banquets, collusive, obscene
party to organized no sense
I do not keep their company
Nor are they familiar with me

Innocent I think that I am

Let me be close to your altar Lord
Not to blasphemers of the word
the attaché cases of crime
the attritions not found but lost
in a circumstanced blessed ghost
No wonder I praise your name

Translated by Thomas Blackburn

29
 They freed me from the mafia

- Lord it is in you I trust

that never ever shall I be lost but inherit
the earth for your hands freed me from the mafia
Into your hands I commend my spirit

You have freed me O Lord God

who celebrate not lies but things as they are
and hate worshippers of empty images
party lines written on neat pages
You are the one my hope rests upon

And did not hand me over to the secret police

but delivered me from the camp of concentration

Pity me God for I am in trouble,

While they are at their riotous celebration
Dissolving the ego in alcohol
we weep in the night-in a species of hell
In a ransacked house there is an empty place
at the dining room table; my cup is bitter and full
as I await their knock at the door
and am rejected by other people
as if I was a ghost and did not exist
All night they blaspheme us on the radio
and the technocrats hatch their plots also

31
I would not be Lord among the lost
but in silence among the just celebrate the just
You God are my hope and my shelter
And among the mutables do not falter or alter

Translated by Thomas Blackburn

by
 You made it public Lord

You made it public

’ Lord
You announced
you were on our side
Now
you're the only ally
we have left

You heard the announcement

The authorities
have fulfilled their threat
They’ve assumed full
and unlimited powers
sO
we'll be expecting you
to open hostilities
any time from now

If what you claim is true

and your military capability
really is greater than theirs
the time
has come to use it

33
 Lord
this
is where you come in

There’s no question we attacked them

before they started this witch-hunt
We hadn’t even been plotting to
before they sent us to prison

The truth is
these thugs set a trap
and we just fell in

The situation is
there’s only you
left to get rid of the dictator
now they’ve put into operation
his scheme
for exploiting
the lowest paid workers

What could I do?

Those were highly paid witnesses
committing perjury
When they’ve finished typing the final draft of my confession

34
. all the interrogators need
is for me to sign and Ill be admitting
conspiracy espionage sabotage and

Lord
what’s the longest
a system can last
when it’s rotten as this with corruption?
When’s the soonest
something can
step in
take over
and
fix these fixers?

How long
can you pretend to be neutral
standing there
watching it happen
listening to them laughing at us
joking about you
and preparing for war
pretending
it’s the safest way to guarantee peace?

35
Lord
how can you sit there
silent
tuning in to radio propaganda
and chasing their one-party channels?
Listen
I tell you they’re preparing for war
and it’s time
you got moving

If
that is
you're going to bother
at all

It couldn’t be you’re getting a taste

for stories about prison-camps tortures and sadists?
that you found it amusing
they called a press conference
to announce the bank holiday
in honour of our destruction?
Because it was us you know that they meant when they said:
all opposition to the party’s political aims
has finally
been eliminated

36
- Lord
have you even got a plan
to put into operation
or
are you planning
to celebrate too?

And
it would have been
SO easy
for you to eliminate thern
and give us
a bit of a holiday
O
God
why

do I spend my life
writing
poems
to
you?

Translated by Sylvester Houédard

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: — - cr - ; or -

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 Hear my cries

- Lord listen to what I’m saying

hear my cries
and my I-can’t-stand-it
You never plot with dictators
your politics are straight
They don’t fool you with slick campaigns
yow’re not behind them
the con-men
the party bosses

Their words are dead

you know there’s nothing in them
their press-releases and statements

Their speeches are honeyed with peace

they drip love and kindness
and their stock-piles grow the faster

They hold peace conferences

more they could not
They talk of friendship among nations
In secret they prepare weapons of war
of utter destruction

39
Their wavelengths dance with lies
evil songs in the darkness
Their desks are heavy with plots
Lord preserve me from their scheming

Their mouths are machine-guns

and their tongues deal death
Punish them Lord
Make dust of their projects
and cheap ideas
of all their memoranda

When the siren wails the last warning

you will be with me
You will be my refuge
my strength and deep shelter

You will bless the man

who shuns their slogans and campaigns
their hand-outs and all they say
You will circle him with armour
and shield him with all your love

Translated by fohn Griffiths

40
 Listen everybody

- Listen everybody, listen to me

There is no cause for trust in any bank
nor security in an insurance policy
They are the extremity of nonentity
However much you may deny the grave
despite all cheques it’s what you must have
They claimed power, they named a city
after their name, property they had stolen
Bloat-eyed, statued, bronzed and swollen
and now'no more than faint nonentity
So do not for the mighty care a straw
they teeter on the edge of nothingness
and are life’s posturing antithesis
their medals but bits of metal, nothing more

But the man of great honour does not understand

the fat and heavy-chested dictator,
that he is fattened like a sacrifice for
his journey to the mysterium of world’s end

Translated by Thomas Blackburn

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-
 Jerusalem is a heap of rubble

- O God so far
the blood of your people flowed from street to street
Jerusalem is a heap of rubble under our feet
It poured into the sewers where the rats are

Propaganda makes us into a joke

all the slogans of hatred keep wide awake

How long will you hate us Lord?

Burn us by your anger abhorred
like a nuclear storm never tired
Must unbelievers ever say
Where is now their God, has he gone away?

Hear the groans of the prisoners

and the sigh of those condemned to forced labours
and those to death sentenced
the prayer of those in.camps who are not mentioned

And we your people will praise you without end

and the generations hear you and understand

Translated by Thomas Blackburn

43
 ~
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 Free me Lord

. Free me Lord
from the S.S. and the N.K.V.D. from the F.B.I. and the G.N.
Free me from war councils and their vicious regimen

You are the judge of all judges

You judge the ministers of justice
You are the energy from which all justice is

Defend me then from falsity

the exiled, the lonely, the deported
the accused of espionage and found guilty
and to forced labour transported

But the weapons of God more terrible are

and ‘sub specie aeternitas’ accurate
than the judgment of those judges whose judgment will occur

I will celebrate you in my singing

where you sit on your seat in the high court of no thing

Translated by Thomas Blackburn

45
 ay ess US
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aunt

ned art yo ptachy

eee Sale watery :

as.

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Lord I’m appealing to you

_Lord
I’m appealing to you
because you claim
to be the God of justice
and these aren’t law-courts
These political tribunals
aren’t concerned about truth
all they do
is check how far
we know the myths
of party dogma

Do you think
I’d object to night-time interrogations
if the floodlights
and lie-detectors
were yours?
I'd plead guilty then .
to the crime of not listening
to commercials and
radio propaganda

The only thing

I tune into
is your word

47
I’m seeing things
through your eyes
and counting on you for protection
Your political wing
is the only shelter left now
for opponents
of the dictator

With his mafiosi

getting us both
in their machine-gun sights
he can have spies all round me
secret police
watching round the clock
and I’ll sleep easy
you're the one
they’ll be confronting

and they won’t win

not

with you to liberate us

from these bankers
these businessmen who’ve lived
a bit too long in exclusive clubs

48
where the deep-freeze
is crammed
and the dog gets fed
on left-overs of caviare
Not
that I was a member
remember
-ing
what you’re to provide
after this
long night’s
over

Translated by Sylvester Houédard

49
Help, Lord

‘Lord who do you think is going to

liberate us
if you don’t?

Certainly not these politicians

They spent the election exploiting each other’s mistakes
and since then they’ve spent it
thinking up lies on the radio
they’re not interested in anything
outside party conflict
it’s either one-up to them
or the others get smeared in the media

Mind you
the lies are clever
they pay experts to think them up
and there’s one truth sacred at party HQs:
power depends on
propaganda

But now
says the Lord
it’s my turn
I’ve been watching the poor
and their oppression

51
 I’ve listened to them groaning
as each party in power
continues to exploit them
and now I’m going to give them
the freedom they long for

Well
that’s God’s propaganda

The riot squads are armed

and no sign of them being laid off
The tanks are still there
so are the machine guns
that’s no sign of them ending
insults and provocations

After each incident

it still amuses our leaders
to pin up the new medals
Tonight in the Club
there’ll be the usual toasts
to another success
while
you can still hear the tears in the slums

52
 Not
of course
if you spend your life
at cocktail parties

Translated by Sylvester Houédard

53
Lord it’s incredible

Lord
it’s incredible
youve done it
you ve actually done it
it’s on the news
“The military have
finally accepted defeat
and the dictator has stepped down from power
the well-known portrait
so much in evidence all over the country
no longer looks down from every wall
Many of the commemorative plaques put up by the party
have begun to disappear
and the squares in all the main cities
are reported to be littered
with fragments of statues toppled overnight
by the people
Old street names are being put back
and newspapers on sale this morning
have uniformly managed
to avoid printing his name’

Lord
can a régime be wiped out
just like that?
their names obliterated

55
their memory
relegated to history books?
could the time ever come
when we had governments like yours
all over the world
real justice
for people everywhere
parliaments
that took the poor into consideration
courts
that actually listened to their complaints
police
who didn’t just shrug
when their corpses
are found murdered?
It’s only that sort of hope
keeps me going
in this place

Lord
you used to be the great liberator
there was a time
you’ld have had this barbed wire
all cut away by now
Just how much longer do you intend
leaving us in this concentration camp?

56
If you got us out
do you think we’d forget you
during the V-day celebrations?
Well — a bit maybe
after peace came
and we could sing in freedom

Lord
what about getting workers
in armament factories
to take over the works
turn the guns against the employers
get the police
to change sides
and make the leaders
face their own firing squads?

Nowadays _
if you want to be famous and get a medal
all you do is think up
a new way of exploiting people
with luck you even end up
embalmed in the party mausoleum

God
if there were only a way

aT
 that would shift them off their pedestals
we could some way show them up for what they are
make the people
see
they’re only tin gods

Now
that really would be
a taste of their own dirty tactics
if you did it

You might even

find it worth while
Your own credibility
is wearing pretty thin
with dictators taking over everywhere
Do you know
on this transistor
there isn’t a station left
where you can escape party broadcasts?

Did you hear them again

last night
having another party
at the headquarters
The windows

58
look over the camp
we always see when they’re lit up

You know to them

your name is just an abstract concept
and
this word ‘justice’
they can’t stop using it
they print it in capital letters
on every manifesto
and yet
they can’t issue a statement to the press
that isn’t designed to deceive us

Well
people know it’s all propaganda and lies
but it’s a more effective
instrument of oppression
than spies and machineguns everywhere
they really think now
they’ll get away with it
Lord
isn’t that all the more reason
for you not letting them

Look at this prison

at the whole system

59
 you can see at a glance who’s innocent
and who needs your protection
You can see
it’s like orphans
once their parents are shot
there’s only you to depend on
there’s only you can
break up their net-work
dismantle the military machine
You're the only option we’ve got
in this political nightmare

Eternity is a long time to be in power Lord

listening
to the downtrodden and destitute
I suppose you’ve found out
that when you keep them waiting long enough
they don’t only treat people like tools
they get to thinking they’ve taken your place

And that’s the moment to choose

to show them
that you
are
you

Translated by Sylvester Houédard

When Israel left the ghettos

When Israel came at last

out of Egypt’s concentration camps and when
the ghettos which had imprisoned us closed in
the mountains skipped like lambs
and hills were like kids
then
and every terror seemed past

Lord, we beg you to

do this but not for us, for your glorious name
“Where is their God?’ the unbelievers exclaim
Their own are politicians, film stars who scream
from all advertising can do

They have mouths which will not speak,

ears which won’t hear, eyes which refuse to see
and noses not used for smelling. Pure fantasy
are these. Men who create gods in this way
fool those who likewise seek

Translated by Elizabeth Fennings

61
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Pes Seth 7) RAPD ero. ¢ age,
tah rian sa
es
Lie
: s ~~ = ie a a J ioe NathSete ae 14 a : .

: ete “ene ee yor GADGET

'
ore
=
“4
es > a
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7 ‘als «e Fi

ee orate
ard : ~—, = =

cn ae i a ie Bd anhe
Ye . , & = ~J

7 . ’ rag rite a + 2 % = Aig =

| saw) ‘| hae quete Ty gels Wing "hea a

es. aS=.4 409 wen rll a are
ag PR ay, SD) ety OL eneeee aera Roper:

& oS SSN AeSraede ers ood fa

oe ; igenieees tonne djs (ote) aie tt e;
47
; ae cereus, Jeni ierrsitte, A 3a See
| a + Uiscaind Siabeens ety sates Fett2
| a, ae Wc ene saint Gd
a cos : ae . re oe
> t 7 Lt

ve can, GeMRA,
Se ¥ a
ie hoes
_ 7
nM x ; . 7

4 ra if
a ey ae ; é :

LAs | et ae
Their shares are grass

Well
it is great
to make a million
on the stock exchange
but
what do you get
for your shares?
They’ve only lasted
in the end
like grass
in asummer drought

Of course
it’s fun
to be rich
to be
a movie star
to get
top ratings on TV
and seeing people read the papers
when it’s your name
splashed on page one
and eating at places
recommended
in the good food guide

63
but
the media won’t run you that long
Make it with the smart set
and you’re lucky
if some graduate
mentions you tomorrow in his thesis
they’ll all toss you
when summer’s over
on the bonfire

You think it’s different

being a famous scientist?
you wait and see
where technical progress
is leading us

Politics?
take this party leader
will he be in long?
You'll go looking one day for him
in the palace
and you'll find the place
taken over by pacifists

64
- Join them?
Before long.
they’ll have the number of concentration camps
doubled
not with these tortures
something more refined
the New Method
of investigation

Give them power

and they’ll stay up half the night
refining
old methods of control
That gives them the other half
for improving
the efficiency of
exploitation

They’ll all be left looking idiots

when the Lord cuts off the power

Stepping up production in
armaments

65
only means more weapons
to use against them
One day
political system:
are going to be something
that happened in the past
the things they budget for
won't help then

It’s the same on a world scale

Chair the summit conference today
and tomorrow
it’s like being last year’s daisies

You ever watch

the way
smoke dissipates?
Well
that’s imperialist expansionism

a bit ahead
of our time

Today for instance

they’ve bugged your house

66
tapped the phone
and put you in the hourly checks to central
They’ll start rigging the trial any day
now agreement’s reached
on each
of our sentences

There could still just be time though

Lord
to see we didn’t reach the dock
to get us
through this police net

like

you walk down town

the main square |
is one big Christmas tree
only it’s his face
decorates it
pictures
plastered everywhere
branching off
down every side street
you walk back

67
they’ve gone
you look for his name
it isn’t there
you go up to people
you ask them
and
no one
is even
allowed
to mention him

Translated by Sylvester Houédard

68
You will find no joy unless
you stay with me

These words were said to me and you:

“You will find no joy unless you stay with me’
Film stars, politicians, dictators too
mean nothing to us. We don’t want to read or see
their newspapers. In short, we’ll have nothing to do
with what their parties tell us is true.

Nor will we listen ever

to slogans or jargon, to pompous broadcasts or
TV commercials. We will dress in our own way
We won’t eat in their restaurants or buy in a store
which belongs to them. We won’t listen to what they say
at their banquets and feasts. We will never

play even the smallest part

in their bloodthirsty toasts. Only one leader is ours
In our Lord’s Promised Land we have already been given
a beautiful plot to tend. Farm laws, of course,
have been changed in what to us is an earthly Heaven
Lord, you beat in our heart,

are present in every cell

of our bodies. All that we are leaps for delight
Wherever we go, we know we shall find you there

69
You surround us with love when we fall asleep at night
and in every dream we have you also share
O we bless you and wish you well

Translated by Elizabeth Fennings

70
 I call out in the night

De profundis clamo ad te domine

Out of the dark night of concentration
In the voice of extreme darkness and of desolation
I question you as to my destiny

My sins are many but you pardon sins

You are not implacable like them in their investigations
But pardon those who admit abominations
I trust in the Lord and not in slogans
nor in the keening of the radio
that is with a party line synonymous
God in your dwelling place look down on us
You freedom are from attritions, from ego

Translated by Thomas Blackburn

71
 el ow

“Ss i

# - 2 *. : a
_ 7 > : ™
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: AL =

— =
; a> c
i Oweal 1S "
- oe
Sule de
2

bo
~ ' -

+)

= FS RTP sor Sener went,

Z esata
ae a eal ih 4 Ti pa

PAs ot « eens ‘egy alone iad Bay

a: 7 = Ries ciate ‘
_————_ i :
a ae ins fos! & ice Chay
ma fev abninyia fi ~~ tad tbe

| Wis 7 neat Welt a toma ad silt

. . sd neha eee
ii le. a ; be pind 20raglomm Line} ie 7
; ih gibyredtt ty, ;aie rae
;
ie : ee vabuaonnge aod prt z=
ee
me
papeeht a tie oy Oe frets Bein ents See
es on trghSeAteaiey 6 ae a a) rq

Be gi oy ' :

ates
if - )

- i] as
4 j i}

aUyT, on 7
a Aa wun ‘ ra -— a A
a ~~
7 =a ; a i A 7
By the waters of Babylon

By the waters of Babylon

we sit and we weep
remembering thee O Sion
in a Babylonian landscape
the lights shining in the river
the glare of night-clubs and bars
hearing Babylonian music
under Sion’s quiet stars

On the willows of the river

we hang up our guitars
and weep by the willow, the willow
as Babylon’s prisoners
They ask us to sing in our language
‘Something native’ from Sion
But away from our own country
how could we ever begin

Let my tongue shrivel up

and my lungs, cancer infect them
if Ido not remember you
O my Jerusalem
Night there, a crust and water
is far far preferable
to this armed Babel, its slaughter

73
May your children unserviceable
spawn of laboratories
be dashed both son and daughter
on mineral verities

Translated by Thomas Blackburn

74
Praise the Lord

Praise the Lord in your infinite variety all creatures,

minute and enormous in your verity
whose particular and unique features
are the context of his glory and his fecundity
Praise the Lord nebulae like grains of dust
silhouetted and fixed on photographic plates
Sirius, that dog star and his confederates
Arcturus, Antares, Aldebaran, the red bull
God’s cup brimming over and ever full
Praise the Lord you his meteorites and comets
In your elliptical orbits and made planets
Praise the Lord atoms and molecules
Protons and electrons and all the stars
the minute protozoa, in their liquid, the radiolaria
Praise the Lord cetaceans and atomic submarines
for you are of God’s mind in your particulars
Birds, the eagle and wren, the aeroplanes
and prisms in emerald copper sulphate
in the electronic microscope infinite
Coloured flowers blooming at the bottom of the sea,
diatoms and the diadems of the Antilles
Like a rose of diamonds, let all these
and the unended maritime fauna
praise the Lord, and the Tropic of Cancer
storms of the North Atlantic and the Humboldt current,
the dark, sweating forests of the Amazon
the shining island jewels of the South Ocean
volcanoes and lagoons and the Caribbean
behind the silhouettes of the infinite palm
democratic republics, the United Nations
praise the Lord as even for police is appropriate
the students, the young, the beautiful,
His glory surpasses the heavens, it is bountiful
telescope and microscope seeing near and far
It is he who has made the people plentiful
Who would not yield to the Lord the word hosanna?

Translated by Thomas Blackburn

76
Galaxies chant the glory of God

Galaxies chant the glory of God

Arcturus twenty times the sun’s magnitude
Antares four hundred and eighty-seven times the sun’s brilliance
and Sigma in Dorado brilliant as three hundred thousand suns
and Alpha in Orion who is equal ae
to twenty-seven million suns
Aldebaran who is fifty million miles across
Alpha in the Lyre three hundred thousand light-years distant
the Nebula in the Ox-herd two hundred million light-years distant
proclaim the works of his hands.
Their language is without words
(it is not like political slogans)
but it is not UNHEARD
The galaxies are sending mystery waves of radio
and the cold hydrogen of interstellar space
is full of waves of vision and of waves of music
From intergalactic emptiness the fields of magnetism
chant into our radio-telescopes
(and it may be theré are civilizations
transmitting messages
to the antennae of our radios)
There exist a billion galaxies in the knowable universe
turning like roundabouts
and like musical tops.
The sun goes about his gigantic orbit
around the constellation of the Archer
— he is like a bridegroom leaping forth from his chamber
aot
moving surrounded by his planets at seventy-two thousand miles
an hour
towards the constellations Hercules and the Lyre
(in a hundred and fifty million years he completes his circle)
and he does not depart by one inch from his orbit.
The Laws of God quiet the subconscious
they are as perfect as the law of gravity
his words are like the parabolas of comets
his decrees are like the centrifugal whirling of the galaxies
his statutes are the statutes of the stars
which keep their positions for ever
and their velocities
and their respective distance
and cross one another in their courses a thousand thousand times
without collision
The judgments of God are just they are not like propaganda
Th ey are luabl
more valua ll rs and affairs of commerce
ble than dolla
Save me from the pride of money ae
and of political power
and I shall be free of crimes
and of the great sin
and be pleased with the words of my poems
O God of my freedom.

Translated by Peter Levi

78
Praise the Lord

Praise the Lord in his cosmos

Praise him in his sanctuary
Praise him with a radio-signal
100,000 million light-years away
Praise him in the stars
in inter-stellar space
Praise him in the galaxies
in inter-galactic space
Praise him in atoms
in inter-atomic space
Praise him on violin and flute
on the saxophone
Praise him with clarinet and horn
with cornet and trombone
on alto-sax and trumpet
Praise him with viola and cello
on piano and harpsichord
Praise him with blues and jazz
: with an orchestra
Praise him with spirituals
with soul-music and Beethoven’s fifth
with marimbas and guitars
Praise him with discs and cassettes
with high-fi systems
and quadraphonic sound
Let everything that draws breath praise him
Alleluia!
Let all living cells praise the Lord
Alleluia!
Praise the Lord!

Translated by fohn Griffiths

80
 These vivid, arresting versions 5 of twenty-five of the Psalms
‘are contemporary in the best and truest sense of that word.
All the original psalmist’s awe of God the Father, allhis
wonder at God’s creative power and invention, all his deep
faith iin God’s concern for the oppressed and wrath for the
oppressor, have been felt afresh by Ernesto Cardenal and
__ re-expressed in the terms of today’s world. Human
- achievement doesn’t blunt his awe, the discoveries of
_ modern science enlarge rather than diminish his sense of a
wonder at the richness of Creation. Se
Ernesto Cardenal is a priest-author already watt known ii. 8
the English-speaking world. Minister of Culture in the fe
Nicaraguan government, he was awarded the Frankfurt_
' Peace Price for 1980 and has been nominated for the Nobel _

Va

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