LITERATURA UNIVERSAL

Robert Frost,

"Mending Wall"

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:

Stay where you are until our backs are turned!'
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors'.
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows?
But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me~
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."

 

 

Reparando el muro

 

 

Algo hay que no es amigo de los muros,

que hincha la tierra helada y los socava,

que arroja al sol las piedras desde el borde

y abre brechas por donde caben dos.

Los cazadores ya son otra cosa:

he seguido sus pasos, reparando,

donde no han dejado piedra sobre piedra

persiguiendo el conejo en su guarida

por alegrar la jauría. Las otras brechas

nadie las ve formar, ni hay rumor de ellas,

pero ahí estan cuando hay que repararlas.

Se lo anuncio al vecino tras la cuesta;

un dia, en la linea divisora,

nos encontramos a rehacer el muro.

Lo formamos entre ambos, paso a paso.

A cada cual las piedras que le tocan,

las ovaladas, las bolas tan redondas

que cuesta hechizos fijarlas en su puesto:

"No se muevan hasta vernos las espaldas!"

Se destrozan los dedos con asirlas.

Cierto, es juego campestre, como tantos,

uno contra uno. A más no viene:

donde vivimos no hace falta muro:

lo suyo es pino, lo mío manzanares.

Mis manzanos, le digo, no amenazan

comerse las piñas de sus pinos.

Solo responde, "Buen muro, buen vecino."

La primavera me azuza, y me pregunto

si quizás le penetro el pensamiento:

"Por qué hace buen vecino? No se trata

de donde hay vacas? Pero aquí no hay vacas.

Antes de levantarlo, yo quisiera

saber a quién incluyo, a quién excluyo,

a quién, quizás, ofendo con el muro.

Algo hay que no es amigo de los muros,

que quiere derrumbarlos." Pienso "duendes,"

pero no hay tales duendes, y quisiera

que él le pusiera nombre. Allá lo veo,

con una piedra empuñada en cada mano,

como un salvaje troglodita armado.

La sombra en que se mueve me parece

más que sombra de selvas o de ramas.

No indaga el estribillo de su padre,

y tanto le place haberlo recordado

que repite, "Buen muro, buen vecino."

 

 

Traducción: Rhina P. Espaillat