Exaltation of Honduras by Céleo Murillo Soto
By: Céleo Murillo Soto
I am here thinking under the daylight,
about the marvelous sensation of life.
About the voice that fades under the nighttime radiance,
about the plain that is born from sublime depths,
about the rivers of anguish that emerge and shake,
deep and ancient submerged roots.
I am here thinking, wounded by the distressing forces
of the world. From the shadows
come strange voices: those of the old barbarians
who sowed life like sowing grains;
those who continued to awaken with prodigious
and lofty yearnings; those who molded
deep idealities with blood and anguish;
those of the mad children who tremblingly placed
their hands on every wound; those of the fugitives
touched by the maternal grace of the vineyards,
in whose arms, sad, harmonious, and beloved,
the smile of the child would tremble like lightning.
But beyond thinking about these things that have nourished,
that have been born into life filled with empty strength,
with anxieties and dreams, with frozen voices,
with impossible yearnings, with unhealthy ambitions,
we must think of you, O provident land!
O fruitful! O lyrical! And intimate chimera
that possesses the gift to transform sap,
to annihilate the brute, to fertilize the grain,
to sculpt the bust that exalts an idol,
to capture the splendor of sacred beauty!
Thus, when we were born in the light of that day,
when we saw the grace of the mad hamlet
populated by water lilies, when we grew alone
in the wind of the pampas, under the sun of the plains,
and eagerly molded numbed dreams,
we felt that from the depths of your ancient abysses,
from the prodigious roots of centuries-old oaks,
from your fresh currents of murmuring waters,
the gift of illuminating everything, of liberating everything,
was born, to weave the fields with the breath of green foliage,
to sculpt the landscape, to create the trembling light of fireflies.
Nurturing and provident, sensual and caressing,
you are, O my land!, anxiety and sorrow:
the hand that fills pitchers by the riverside,
the love that tremblingly unites beings in fire,
the passion that seizes, empty and inhumane,
that ruthlessly cuts through sex, severs heads,
and clinging to the lightning of eternal forces,
intoxicates with nobility the first caresses,
and dresses in ermine, embroiders soft lace,
so that sleeping in vague smiles are the children.
For this reason, from a distance, trembling with impatience,
I see you eagerly emerging in the light of this day.
That you fill yourself with seeds, that you nourish yourself with yearnings,
that you hold the future sleeping in your hands,
that, like in the legend, you are reminiscent
and at the same time embody all the forces of the present.
Because in you there is sap that fertilizes fruits,
the radiance of the evening that sets aflame with stars
the expanse of the pampas, the future mountain,
the gold of ripe summer wheat,
the song of doves, of the bold oropendola,
the trill that vibrates hanging from the branches;
and from the graceful flight of mutilated egrets,
the fleeting hue of twilight,
the infinite question that chants in flames
over the prairie, the radiating voice, the awaiting emotion,
and the flight of nuptial birds.
I don’t know if words have the precise gift
to express the hidden graces, the land
of youth and paradise. I don’t know if emotion
can contain you and in morning voices
say that you are celebrating, that your streams sing,
that strange voices populate your beating heart,
that from the bitter history that engulfed you in flames
only embers remain, inhuman passions
that will erase their traces from the amber landscape
so that in all paternal homes, the taste of grace hangs,
with which a trill ignites.
Because triumphant forces rise in the shadows:
it is not Ezekiel, not Gaspar, or the pale Gray,
who will open the forgotten furrows,
not the mad Caínes of the past,
who hide the scythe and still intend to wield it.
It is the mad youngsters who see their future,
who light the lamps of love, of pain,
who hide the fire of the forgotten masses,
who see their misery exploited and denied,
who know that the world must emerge from chaos
to enter the furrow of fertile ideas.
And thus, O beloved land!, caressing and trembling,
and violated, you will rise healed from your old wounds,
lost between dawn and dusk,
a hand that possesses balms and generously bestows them in life,
a haven for the exhausted poor who tremble,
a fire for those who live shrouded in darkness,
bread for those who hunger in the shadows and remain silent,
laws for the men who sell their fatigue,
and by the light of lamps in the inhumane night,
pain offers them as a gift a lock of gray hair.
