DICHTERLIEBE
Poetry has just one reality: suffering.
Baudelaire attests to it. Ovid would approve
of such declarations.
And this, on the other hand, guarantees
the endangered survival of an art
read by few and apparently
detested by many
as a disorder of the conscience, a remnant
from times much older than ours now
in which science claims to enjoy
an endless monopoly on magic.
José Emilio Pacheco
Translated by Katherine M. Hedeen y Víctor Rodríguez Núñez