A poem from Luis de Góngora, Quevedo's mortal enemy

Luis de Góngora y Argote (1561-1627)

Noble disappointment, I thank heavens

that you broke the rope that held me prisoner.

I’ll hang the heavy chains

of my grave errors¹ in your temple

for such a great miracle!

Because with your help I shook

the strong joints of the silver yoke off my neck.

The damp candles and broken oars

that I rescued from the sea

and offered at port will now

be an ornament to your temple walls,

your name’s glory, and a disclaimer of love.

So, you’re overpowering the youthful archer.

Then may mad hopes, vain thoughts, lost steps,

trivial desires, angry cares, poisonous jealousy

and infernal glories pull your chariot

and be your prize.

Let them write you hymns, their verses saying

that you free captives and give sight to the blind.

May a thousand fires of the Sabeus tree’s

precious sap² bow before your deity.

But who makes me delve into sensible matters

by speaking of the truth in these times

when people who dress in the latest fashion

spend most of their days in jokes and tomfoolery?

Ungrateful mistress of your own chambers,

sweeter and tastier than turnips in Advent,

lend me your ear for a time,

‘cause I want to give full reign to my rambling thoughts:

How many cold nights I was so frozen

that your dog mistook me for a street corner

and lifting his leg with grace,

he gilded my black shoes!

Oh, what nights like these, madam, I remember walking around looking for pebbles

on the ground to make a sign on your door

and upon picking one up my hands were beshat!

Oh, how many days I walked with great pains,

as if weighted down with steel,

because I was ill.

Being as skinny as I was

I looked like a cowbell,

bones on the inside and iron on the outside

How many months and years

I lived in agony on the Poor Hill without even being Beltenebros!³

Where I spent entire days writing sonnets,

eating nothing but my nails!

What foolish things I wrote on a thousand pages

that you laugh about now and I admit to.

Although there was at time

when I thought of them as discrete words

and you as come-ons.

How many midnights I sang on my instrument:

Madam, put out my fire!

when, although you did not respond,

the neighbor complied

by emptying a large bowl onto the street.

Goodbye, madam, because to me your face

is like a chimney in summer

and snow in winter-

you’ve filled my spleen with gall stones.

And I think being a dolt for six years is long enough!

1- in Spanish hierros- “chains”, yerros- “errors”

grave- “heavy” or “grave”

2- Poetic cliché from Virgil

3- Alternate identity of Amadís de Gaula, a knight-errant in medieval Spanish literature, who pretended to be a hermit after his lady insulted him.