Streets, a garden,
A plot of ground - and its corpses.
To die - no, to live.
How urbane, that eternity!
Upright, marble stone.
The names of other people.
Immortality
Preserves its aftermath.
And what about that grief?
A plot of ground knows nothing
Of partings.
Where is death?
The city seethes
All round the graves.
A similar peace
Floats far and wide.
Now joined
By a common neglect,
The living and the dead
Crowd together
~Jorge Gullén (Translated by Charles Guenther. Roots & Wings: Poetry from Spain 1900-1975. Hardie St. Martin, Editor. Harper & Row. 1976. p.121)
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