A don Francisco de Quevedo
(atribído a Góngora)

Cierto poeta, en forma peregrina
cuanto devota, se metió a romero,
con quien pudiera bien todo barbero
lavar la más llagada disciplina.

Era su benditísima esclavina,
en cuanto suya, de un hermoso cuero,
su báculo timón del más zorrero
bajel, que desde el Faro de Cecina

a Brindis, sin hacer agua, navega.
Este sin landre claudicante Roque,
de una venera justamente vano,

que en oro engasta, santa insignia, aloque,
a San Trago camina, donde llega:
que tanto anda el cojo como el sano.



To Don Francisco de Quevedo
(attributed to Góngora)

A poet, like a tripper all got up
was got up high in pilgrim's spirits too,
so much so that with him an able barber
could sterilize the scourge's bloodiest wound.

His holiest of holy pilgrim's cloak,
since it was his, was leather, lushly done,
his walking-stick the rudder of a lurching
ship, which from a salty lighthouse comes

to Wineland, and not making water sails.
Now this, without an ulcer, limping saint
who of a scallop shell's so rightly vain --

that dear insignia, set in gold, rosé --
into St. Swallow strides, his goal attained:
for here walk both the hardy and the lame. 

                     (©Alix Ingber, 1995)



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Translation notes: Góngora's satirical sonnets are particularly difficult to work with. This one contains all sorts of untranslatable puns, and the translation attempts to make as many of these as possible work in English.



E-mail your comments and questions to:

Alix Ingber
Professor of Spanish
Sweet Briar College

ingber@sbc.edu



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