TO AN ARROYO
To my brother Juan de Dios Peza
When everything was flowers along your way,
when everything was birds in your surroundings,
yielding from your course to the slope
everything was fleeting and sudden in you.
Winter came with its mists, wine,
the ice that today makes your flow stagnant,
and in such a sad and strange situation
not even a pallid sun gives you a destiny.
And so in life the incessant flight
while everything is illusion, advances
in just one hour the scope of the sky.
And when the duel appears in the distance
then like you, changed in ice,
it can neither reflect nor hope.
Manuel Acuña
English Translation from markandrewholmes.com