Delectación morosa

Leopoldo Lugones(1874–1938)

Los crepúsculos del jardín, 1905

La tarde, con ligera pinceladaque iluminó la paz de nuestro asilo,apuntó en su matiz crisoberilouna sutil decoración morada.

Surgió enorme la luna en la enramada;las hojas agravaban su sigilo,y una araña en la punta de su hilo,tejía sobre el astro, hipnotizada.

Poblóse de murciélagos el combocielo, a manera de chinesco biombo;tus rodillas exangües sobre el plinto

manifestaban la delicia inerte,y a nuestros pies un río de jacintocorría sin rumor hacia la muerte

From Los crepúsculos del jardín (1905), via the Spanish Wikisource transcription. No emendation was made.

Public domainThis poem is in the public domain. You may read it, copy it, recite it and publish it without asking anyone.

About the poem

The title is a term from moral theology — delectación morosa is the pleasurable lingering over a delightful thought — and Lugones uses it with all the mischief of modernismo. The sonnet paints an evening in a garden: the dusk laid on with a light brushstroke, the moon coming up, and two lovers whose scene is hinted among the flowers and the shade.

Lugones here is a painter in words: every line is colour and scent, and the sense arrives through the senses before the idea. It belongs to Los crepúsculos del jardín (1905), the most sensual book of Argentine modernismo, where the garden is not a backdrop but the very stage of desire.

The verse is kept in Spanish. Translating it in passing would replace the work with a paraphrase of it.